Citizen of the world

“ The private citizen may sometimes be disposed to complain that he is obliged to pass his life in obscurity, while the public man, the ruler of the land, has dignity and power, and attracts the gaze of the world. ”

“ In every sense of the word he was a noble citizen and a splendid example for all men to follow and imitate in his public spirit, his reverence for law, his lofty standard of civic duty and his zeal for the honor and good name of his country. ”

“ I ask you, in the name of humanity and patriotism, to 'go and do likewise.' Your country demands your assistance; respond generously, quickly; think of the proud eminence on which you stand before the working-men of the world,—as American citizens!—and acquit yourselves as though you felt your dignity. ”

“ Let our conceptions be enlarged to the circle of our duties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole of the vast field in which we are called to act. Let our object be, OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of Liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration for ever! ”

“ Given a world law and world security, a release from the net of bickering frontiers, world-wide freedom of movement, and world-wide fellowship, a thousand good things that are now beyond hope or dreaming would come into the ordinary life. ”

“ When I look around me, my fellow-citizens, and see and know that the prospects of the Republic are brightening, its resources developing, its commerce extending, and its moral influence in the community of nations increasing, my heart is filled with sensations of joy and pride. A poor and despised people a few years ago, borne down by depressing influences at home and abroad, we have risen, in defiance of all obstacles, to a respectable place in the eye of the world. One great nation is inviting us to a full participancy in all its privileges, and to a full community of laws and interests. ”

“ And these, both of them, rest on Establishments, which, though not indeed national, are cosmopolitan; and perhaps here, what the individual man does not lose by these conditions of his rearing, the citizen, and the State of which he is a citizen loses. ”

“ In the highest civilizations the individual citizen is raised above himself and made part of a greater life, which we may call the National Being. He enters into it, and it becomes in oversoul to him, and gives to all his works a character and grandeur and a relation to the works of his fellow-citizens, so that all he does conspires with the labors of others for unity and magnificence of effect. ”

“ Every man in this country considers himself as a constituent of a great nation, prides himself on his nationality and the glory of the nation, and therefore keeps an eye on the welfare of his country. ”

“ If this citizenship means anything, it means that we should be concerned about everything which makes for law, for order, for good government, for individual, municipal, state, and national purity and righteousness; it means that each one of us ought to be a living example of the best type of what a citizen ought to be. ”

“ But I am persuaded, fellow-citizens, that we have none such among us;—that every citizen will do his duty, and exert himself to the utmost of his abilities to sustain the honor of his country, promote her interests, and the interests of his fellow-citizens, and to hand down unimpaired to future generations, the freedom and independence we this day enjoy. ”

“ In this wise he pictured a nation, saved from State tutelage, without a master, almost without laws, a happy nation, each citizen of which, completely developed by the exercise of liberty, would, of his free will, come to an understanding with his neighbours with regard to the thousand necessities of life. ”

“ How would a nation that has been for some time a contributor to the world's culture and civilisation try to maintain its dignity and prestige? What are the means by which an infant or a degenerate community can hope to rise to the standing of advanced nations? Is there any good in the efforts and energies of agitators, martyrs, and missionaries? What is the value of the work and perseverance of religious preachers, and social reformers, patriots, and philanthropists? ”

“ In this new nation was realized the dream of the social philosophers and philanthropists of all ages: a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, resting on the deep and solid foundations of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. ”

“ The attainment of a high cultural civilization demands, first, the ideal type of citizen and, then, ideal and adequate social mechanisms wherewith such a citizenry may control the economic and political institutions of such an advanced human society. ”

“ One nation, so established in this conviction that its actions are automatically founded upon the welfare of the world, could bring about the true world-fatherland in a generation; and one human heart so established begins to touch from the first moment the profound significances of life.
Personally and nationally, this plain but tremendous concept is beginning to manifest itself here in America. I do not write as a patriot. It is not my country that is of interest, but humankind. ”

“ When we analyze the strong feeling of nationality which is so potent at the present time, we recognize that it consists largely in the idea of the pre-eminence of that community whose member we happen to be,—in the pre-eminent value of 208its language, of its customs, and of its traditions, and in the belief that it is right to preserve its peculiarities and to impose them upon the rest of the world. ”

“ But independent of these things it should be remembered that every man—private or public—can acquire full world citizenship by learning to think in world terms and developing the world consciousness which makes you feel that you are a necessary part of all that exists. ”

“ I would like to underline in the most emphatic way that it is possible to have this Great State, essentially socialistic, owning and running the land and all the great public services, sustaining everybody in absolute freedom at a certain minimum of comfort and well-being, and still leaving most of the interests, amusements, and adornments of the individual life, and all sorts of collective concerns, social and political discussion, religious worship, philosophy, and the like to the free personal initiatives of entirely unofficial people. ”

“ It seems to petrify or congeal national life, placing each individual in the position of a member of a pure theocracy, rather than in that of a patriotic citizen of a country, or member of a nationality. ”

“ Nations have the government which they deserve, or rather, the government which they have is truly no more than the magnified and public projection of the private morality and mentality of the nation. ”

“ Free from many of the dangers that surround the States of Europe, you have unequalled opportunities for showing what a high spirit of citizenship—zealous, intelligent, disinterested—may do for the happiness and dignity of a mighty nation, enabling it to become what its founders hoped it might be—a model for other peoples more lately emerged into the sunlight of freedom. ”

“ Common citizenship will tend to elevate and enlighten all the citizens, and the healthful influences resulting therefrom will gradually permeate into the manners, morals, and legislation of all the countries involved. ”

“ The manly consciousness of freedom which creates and finds expression in the constitution elevates the middle classes who form its chief support; while the direct or indirect contact with public [Pg 100] affairs develops the intelligence and strengthens the character of the citizen. ”

“ To approach the task in any other spirit than that of American liberty, coupled with a realising sense of the cosmopolitan character of the population to be served, would, in my judgment, be to err fundamentally. ”

“ I have in the course of my life met with many people, who, under the plausible pretext of liberality and greatness of mind, have called themselves Citizens of the World, and declared that 54the Country where they lived, be that what Country it might, was their’s, and demanded their allegiance and protection: but I have always shrewdly suspected, that such men act from a consciousness of being outcasts of their own Country——and, scorned and rejected by their fellow-citizens, would retaliate by affecting to deny their natural attachment. ”

“ To all general purposes we have uniformly been one people each individual citizen everywhere enjoying the same national rights, privileges, and protection. ”

“ People of the world, establish equality right up to the limits of your great life. Lay the foundations of the republic of republics over all the area where you breathe; that is to say, the common control in broad daylight of all external affairs, of community in the laws of labor, of production and of commerce. ”

“ I have given so much of this speech, because I think that it affords a good specimen of the tendency and impulse of speeches in this country, and especially in the Western country, where society evidently feels itself to belong in a high degree to the citizenship of the world; to be universal, because it is composed of people of all nations flowing in hither by emigration ”

“ In politics, we speak of human rights. On this ground we can discuss the matter without taking the Lord's Name in vain, without profanely and insolently associating Him with the complicated results of our pride. ”

“ Looking towards a land and a polity, our dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the dignity of a national life which has a voice among the peoples of the East and the West; which will plant the wisdom and skill of our race, so that it may be, as of old, a medium of transmission and understanding. ”

“ The sciences, the literature, the customs, the lessons of experience, the skill, the spirit of every country, exercise an influence upon every other. In this peaceful interchange of the products of the intellect, in this constant passing to and fro of the people of different countries of the civilized world, we find in each land a system of law peculiar to the country itself, and answering to what I believe to be a just description of all laws which regulate the relations of individuals to each other, in being a formulation of the custom of the [Pg 190] civil community. ”

“ They employ philosophical reasonings to explain what is the least philosophic thing in the world, respect for force and the fear which transforms that respect into admiration.' But the fact remains that the characters of nations frequently change, or rather that what we call national character is usually only the policy of the governing class, forced upon it by circumstances, or the manner of living which climate, geographical position, and other external causes have made necessary for the inhabitants of a country. ”

“ It will no longer be identified with blind obedience and limited class courage. The word will come to mean a man and a fellow-citizen with the same civilised interests, the same conception of law, the same need of freedom, the same feeling for honour, as all other fellow-citizens. ”

“ Through its teaching we are learning that our responsibility as citizens for a law does not cease with its enactment, but rather begins there. We are growing, in other words, to the stature of real citizenship. ”

“ Civilization is thy mission, and man's welfare thine appointed charge. The nation that most warmly fosters thee shall ever be the greatest in the earth; and without thee no nation shall endure for a day. ”

“ And in the first place I say, that wherever there is in the Christian and civilized world a nationality of character—wherever there exists a nation of sufficient knowledge and wealth and population to constitute a Government, then a National Government is a necessary and proper result of nationality of character. ”

“ Become a citizen of a country where true worth has always its chance and one may hope to climb to any heights whatsoever." Quite like an advertisement he talked, but I read their so-called Declaration, finding it snarky in the extreme and with no end of silly rot about equality. ”

“ The powers of state, therefore, should embrace individual life in its entirety; from infancy to mature age, “in all conditions and relations, whether domestic, religious, social, industrial or political.” ”

“ One leads to a higher citizenship, a freer expression of the individual and a fuller life for all. The other leads to reaction, the rule of the few over the many, and the restriction of the average man's chances to grow upward. ”

“ Those from countries where government was relatively democratic, where individual liberty prevailed, where political, social, and economic conditions were conducive to contentment, were satisfied to keep the citizenship of their fatherlands. ”

“ Human nature expresses itself in them as characteristically as in statues, or songs, or railroads, and an abstract of the codes of nations would be a transcript of the common conscience. Governments have their origin in the moral identity of men. ”

“ It will continue to be our pride and our boast, the worthy representative upon the ocean, of the genius, the skill, and the enterprise of our people—of the boundless resources of our growing country—of the power, and grandeur, and glory, as well as the justice and humanity of our free institutions. ”

“ We honor a distinguished and devoted patriot, who came to this continent in the interests of a poor and oppressed people, and who has told in burning words their woeful story to every heart in two English-speaking nations, appealing against their oppressor, not in passion or violence, but in the spirit of true reform, of argument and public morality. ”