Citizen

“ 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. ”

“ When the citizen simply does his duty in the place where he stands, the boss will be eliminated, in the nation, in the State, in the town, and we shall have, what by courtesy we say we have now, a government by the people. ”

“ But beyond this, there is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers on Government or in any actual experiment heretofore tried, an exposition of the term citizen which has not been understood as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I assume that in this demonstration you are evidencing your loyalty and fidelity to the Government of which we are all citizens.
You welcome me as one who, for the time being by your choice, is charged with the execution of the law. It is a great thing to be a citizen of this country, and the privilege has its corresponding obligations. ”

“ We are all familiar with the successive steps of the continuing struggle between “subjects,” educated to be “citizens,” and an omnipotent government, unshaken in its purpose to make their actual status the same as their legal one. ”

“ At a very early period in the history of the community, the interest that each citizen has in the wise and effectual regulation of such matters as these becomes conspicuous to all, and more especially to those usually, or, on the average, more advanced and intelligent members of the community who find themselves charged, through, it may be, a series of political vicissitudes, with the duties of government. ”

“ Their knowledge came to them from their own personal experience in those fifteen years. They were a people, born subjects of government, who died citizens of a great nation and whose every government, in America, was their servant. ”

“ The people were to be the source of authority in the new state. The citizen was to have a voice because he was an adult, capable of rendering judgment in the selection of public servants and in the determination of public policy. ”

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

“ But, in the writers of other nations, and under systems of polity deemed less liberal than that of England, we find the term citizen familiarly reviving, and the character and the rights and duties that term implies, particularly defined. ”

“ The obligations of each person to society consist in defending it, serving it, living in submission to the laws, and respecting those who are the agents of them.
4. No one is a good citizen unless he is a good son, good father, good brother, good friend, good husband. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To do and bear whatever is necessary to maintain that organization of life which the state represents is the imperative duty of every citizen. This duty to serve the country is correlative to the right to be a citizen. ”

“ 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 a republic the first rule for the guidance of the citizen is obedience to law. ”

“ The individual free to aspire and work, the community its own police officer and guardian.
We are here as American citizens, having, first, duties to our families, then to our neighborhood—to the institutions and business with which we are connected—but above all, and through and by all these duties, to our country and to God, by whose beneficial guidance our Government was founded, by whose favor and protection it has been preserved. ”

“ That which makes them formidable in democracies40 is the fact that the interest of each individual citizen in protecting himself and the public against the selfish groups may be so small an interest that everybody neglects it, and the groups get their way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In order to make this diversity of forms clearer, and to assign them their different names, we shall observe in the first place that the sovereign may entrust the care of the government to the whole nation or to the greater part of the nation, so that there are more citizen magistrates than private citizens. This form of government is called Democracy. ”

“ It is not the citizen, or a taxpayer, or voter, or office-holder, but the cultivated, free individual who is the true aim of all social progress. ”

“ Others again, more rationally, define a republick to signify only a government, in which all men, rich and poor, magistrates and subjects, officers and people, masters and servants, the first citizen and the last, are equally subject to the lazes. ”

“ It is our belief that the state is the servant of the citizen and not his master. ”

“ The idea which the ordinary citizen has of the common good served by the state is much more limited in content. Very likely he does not think of it at all in connection with anything that the term 'state' represents to him. ”

“ Fellow-citizens, for we are all equal, with the exception of certain differences that need not now be named, it is a government for your good, and therefore it is a government that likes itself, and whose first duty it is to protect itself and its officers at all hazards, even though it might by accident commit some seeming injustice. ”

“ Observe this whole world arranged in the same human commonwealth, with what administrations, with what orderly degrees of authority, with what conditions of citizenship, with what laws, manners, arts! ”

“ You are thinking of yourself, they of others and the devoirs they owe them. You are republican and brought up to consider yourself “as good as any, and better than most.” Sound doctrine for the citizen, no doubt ”

“ AMONG the hopeful signs of the times we may reckon the increased attention that is being given in our higher schools to the study of "civics," a term which includes the general principles of government, the Constitution of our own country in particular, and the duties of citizenship. ”

“ I have stated that the constitutions of our several States vary more or less in some particulars. But there are certain principles in which all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of the life, liberty, property, and safety of the citizen. ”

“ With a little more common sense, and much less of the uncommon sort, we should better understand Scripture, the institutions under which we live, the several rights of our fellow-citizens in all sections of the country, and the good, sound, practical, social relations, which ought to contribute infinitely more than they do to the happiness of mankind. ”

“ Here they have opportunities such as have existed never before, nor in any other country, for trying to inspire the nation with a love of truth and honour, with a sense of the high obligations of citizenship, and especially of those who hold public office. ”

“ I believe deeply in the ultimate purposes of this Nation—described by the Constitution, tempered by history, embodied in progressive laws, and given life by men and women that have been elected to serve their 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. ”

“ The good sense of the gentlemen to whom I address myself will, I am persuaded, make the necessary and present distinction between persons acting in a public capacity and character, especially of another nation, and our own citizens, who are to stand or fall by their own laws, and the estimation of their countrymen. ”

“ Tell citizens that they need to become citizens of this kingdom, that the commonwealth on earth may be the image and the vestibule of the commonwealth of the skies. Tell classes that they need the instructions of this Master, that society may be less a den of selfish contentions, and more a field of gracious ministries and ennobling toils. Tell commerce that she needs the inspiration of this duty, that the dull, the common, the base may be transfigured and wear the forms of beauty, nobleness, and truth. ”

“ The fact that the State or community is the employer gives it a great power over the lives of ordinary citizens, since it can deny them access to the use of these instruments. But the State is not an abstraction but a group of men—clerks, bureaucrats, politicians, statesmen, philosophers—call them what you will. ”

“ The most of these people have made great advancement in civilization, and many are fit to embrace the full advantages of citizenship. They are under the care of the Government as much as any other portion of its people, and it is as responsible and in some respects more responsible for their welfare. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He has not only filled and adorned high offices in the nation, but he by his grand character, lofty aims and advanced views upon questions of public morality, gained the position of one of the foremost citizens of the republic. ”

“ The speaker resumed:
'A native of the State which he represents in the Council of the Nation, reared among the youth of a section where every element of manhood is early brought into play, he is eminently a man of the people. The safety, the permanency, and the prosperity of the Nation depend upon the courage, the integrity, and the loyalty of its citizens. ”

“ And here I would say, most seriously, that we, who are private citizens, should learn ourselves, and teach our children, to respect all constituted authority, to reverence the laws, and to fear our rulers. ”

“ You must ever bear in mind that while, when you become citizens, you will possess certain rights and privileges—such as the elective franchise and equality before the law—there are, as well, sacred obligations and duties imposed upon you, as citizens, that should be faithfully regarded and performed. ”

“ Through this the citizen is formed in Advance.
"The government gives the national form to souls.3425 Nations, in the long run, are what the government makes them—soldiers, citizens, men when so disposed, a populace, canaille if it pleases," being fashioned by their education. ”

“ I could give you a list of ten or twenty influential citizens whose will would be next to law in a matter like this who could in a month, if they put heart and hand to it, do such a work for humanity here as would make the angels glad. ”