Niccolo Machiavelli
Political Philosopher, Historian
"A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted."
Citizens quotes
Citizens
1.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Mahatma Gandhi
Political Leader
"Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness."
Socrates
Philosopher
"I am a Citizen of the World, and my Nationality is Goodwill."
Woodrow Wilson
Politician
"We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this."
Samuel Adams
Politician
"A true patriot would keep the attention of his fellow citizens awake to their grievances, and not allow them to rest till the causes of their just complaints are removed."
Quote collection
Citizens quotes (page 1 of 54)
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"A society should be judged not by how it treats its outstanding citizens but by how it treats its criminals."
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"You have to take ownership and leadership of tomorrow. For that to be possible, you have to strengthen your capacity and widen your vision as a global citizen."
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"Our citizens may be deceived for awhile, and have been deceived; but as long as the presses can be protected, we may trust to them for light."
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"No government can be free that does not allow all its citizens to participate in the formation and execution of her laws."
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"The Social Security Act offers to all our citizens a workable and working method of meeting urgent present needs and of forestalling future need. It utilizes the familiar machinery of our Federal-State government to promote the common welfare and the economic stability of the Nation."
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"The American elite is almost beyond redemption. . . . Moral relativism has set in so deeply that the gilded classes have become incapable of discerning right from wrong. Everything can be explained away, especially by journalists. Life is one great moral mush--sophistry washed down with Chardonnay. The ordinary citizens, thank goodness, still adhere to absolutes.... It is they who have saved the republic from creeping degradation while their 'betters' were derelict."
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"The state is the servant of the citizen, and not his master."
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"There should exist among the citizens neither extreme poverty nor again excessive wealth, for both are productive of great evil."
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"No one is born a good citizen or a good democrat or a good leader; it takes time and education."
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"One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free. They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice. They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression. And this nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free."
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"When economic power became concentrated in a few hands, then political power flowed to those possessors and away from the citizens, ultimately resulting in an oligarchy or tyranny."
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"No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens."
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"Capitalism has been called a system of greed—yet it is the system that raised the standard of living of its poorest citizens to heights no collectivist system has ever begun to equal, and no tribal gang can conceive of."
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"I am a citizen, not of Athens, or Greece, but of the world."
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"If the people fail to vote, a government will be developed which is not their government... The whole system of American Government rests on the ballot box. Unless citizens perform their duties there, such a system of government is doomed to failure."
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"Of all the treasures a state can possess, the human lives of its citizens are for us the most precious."
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"The truthfulness of materials of constructions, concrete, bricks and stone, shall be maintained in all buildings constructed or to be constructed. The seed of Chandigarh is well sown. It is for the citizens to see that the tree flourishes."
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"The days of humiliation, of second-class citizens and of inequality are over and gone forever."
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"I'm not a politician by profession. I am a citizen who decided I had to be personally involved."
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"It bodes very ill for government when men are exalted to places of high trust through their own solicitations. He only fills a place with dignity who is invited to it by his fellow citizens from the experience they have had of his adequate abilities."
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