Civic Discourse Quotes & Sayings

She'd flown bareback across wide-open Texas land. She'd once shot a charging boar and never flinched. She'd put her life at risk for her country without a complaint. She was not a weakling. — Becky Wade

Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership. — Jerzy Kosinski

Eventually, I was sent to Wales and Germany, and after the war, to Paris. — Lloyd Alexander

The universe is a single life comprising one substance and one soul. — Marcus Aurelius

It matters because the emerging civic structures and spatial arrangements of the digital era will profoundly affect our access to economic opportunities and public services, the character and content of public discourse, — William J. Mitchell

The danger we face does not come from religion. It comes from a growing intellectual bankruptcy that is one of the symptoms of a dying culture. In ancient Rome, as the republic disintegrated and the Caesars were deified, as the Roman Senate became little more than an echo chamber of the emperor, the population's attention was diverted by a series of frontier wars and violent and elaborate spectacles in the arena. The excitement of entertainment consumed ancient Rome's emotional and intellectual life. It poisoned civic and political discourse. Social critics no longer had a form in which to speak. They were answered with ridicule and rage. It was not prerogative of the citizen to think. — Chris Hedges

Okay, then, what was he like? Just give me something to go on so that I have a shot at him!'
'A shot at him? Are you on an elk hunt? — Sara Zarr

The problem with trying to be relevant is it makes us copy what culture is already doing. To be relevant, you have to copy what is cool. So we put our mouths on the tailpipe of secular culture in hopes we can recycle some of it and use it for ourselves. The problem with this is that it automatically puts us ten to fifteen years behind culture because rather than setting the precedent, we are copying their systems. This is where we get a huge section of Christian apparel and coffee mugs that simply copy secular logos. My favorite is the shirt with the words "Holy Spirit" printed in the same font and logo as Sprite. Or the one with "A bread crumb and a fish" instead of Abercrombie and Fitch. We call it redeeming, but it's actually stealing. Making bad art is bad in and of itself, but if we are Christians, this takes on a whole other level of weight. Because we are called to mirror and reflect God, everything we do should give people a proper picture of who he is. — Jefferson Bethke

In our democracy and our civic discourse, it seems as if folks who take religion the most seriously are sometimes also those who are suspicious of those not like them. — Barack Obama

Instead of telling them God has a wonderful plan for their life - tell them who God is. — Paul Washer

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We suffer from a terrible poverty of civic discourse in this country. Surely, it is outside of America's best traditions to send the signal that patriotism is mindless emotion, that leadership is avoiding saying tough things, that citizenship is toeing the line. But such is the result of a lack of openness, our nervousness with debate. — Geneva Overholser