Quotes & Sayings About Civic Sense

Perhaps all this modern ferment of what's known as 'social conscience' or 'civic responsibility' isn't a result of the sense of duty, but of the old, old craving for beauty. — Dorothy Canfield Fisher

The Court has a special responsibility to ensure that the Constitution works in practice. While education, including the transmission of our civic values from one generation to the next, must play the major role in maintaining public confidence in the Court's decisions, the Court too must help maintain public acceptance of its own legitimacy. It can do this best by helping ensure that the Constitution remains "workable" in a broad sense of the term. Specifically, it can and should interpret the Constitution in a way that works for the people of today. — Stephen G. Breyer

In an era when careerism dominates the campus, is it too much to expect students to go beyond their private interests, learn about the world around them, develop a sense of civic and social responsibility, and discover how they can contribute to the common good? — Ernest L. Boyer

Fellow-feeling ... is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Neither our national nor our local civic life can be what it should be unless it is marked by the fellow-feeling, the mutual kindness, the mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests, which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate together for a common object. A very large share of the rancor of political and social strife arises either from sheer misunderstanding by one section, or by one class, of another, or else from the fact that the two sections, or two classes, are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other's passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view, while they are both entirely ignorant of their community of feeling as regards the essentials of manhood and humanity. — Theodore Roosevelt

Like many wealthy Americans, he was imbued with a sense of civic responsibility — Anthony Horowitz

I started sfCiti because I believed that technology companies needed to take a 'One City' approach and build a shared sense of community and civic responsibility in San Francisco. — Ron Conway

Alexis de Tocqueville warned that as the economy and government of America got bigger, citizens could become smaller: less practiced in the forms of everyday power, more dependent on vast distant social machines, more isolated and atomized--and therefore more susceptible to despotism.

He warned that if the "habits of the heart" fed by civic clubs and active self-government evaporated, citizens would regress to pure egoism. They would stop thinking about things greater than their immediate circle. Public life would disappear. And that would only accelerate their own disempowerment.

This is painfully close to a description of the United States since Trump and Europe since Brexit. And the only way to reverse this vicious cycle of retreat and atrophy is to reverse it: to find a sense of purpose that is greater than the self, and to exercise power with others and for others in democratic life. — Eric Liu

I resent you - " Robespierre said. His words were lost. "The People," he shouted, "are everywhere good, and if they obstruct the Revolution - even, for example, at Toulon - we must blame their leaders."
"What are you going on about this for?" Danton asked him.
Fabre launched himself from the wall. "He is trying to enunciate a doctrine," he shrieked. "He thinks the time has come for a bloody sermon."
"If only," Robespierre yelled, "there were more vertu."
"More what?"
"Vertu. Love of one's country. Self-sacrifice. Civic spirit."
"One appreciates your sense of humor, of course." Danton jerked his thumb in the direction of the noise. "The only vertu those bastards understand is the kind I demonstrate every night to my wife. — Hilary Mantel

Our civic life is heavily marked - indeed, pocked - by debates in which each side is so certain of its position that any movement is effectively impossible. For that matter, debate - in its original sense of "to consider something, to deliberate" - is impossible. We wind up with so much sound and fury and nothing gained. — Leah Hager Cohen

Universities should be about more than developing work skills. They must also be about producing civic-minded and critically engaged citizens - citizens who can engage in debate, dialogue and bear witness to a different and critical sense of remembering, agency, ethics and collective resistance. — Henry Giroux

There's something unique about the United States, a sense of individual rights and freedoms, and a sense of social and civic responsibility that we contributed to so much of the world. We lost that mission in the 1980s and 1990s, when we entered a gilded age, and the culture of individualism became a culture of avarice. — George Hickenlooper

Well, if there is a spectrum between ethnic and civic forms of nationalism, which is a rather schematic way of looking at it, all nationalism contains elements of both, but Scotland is very far on the civic end of the spectrum. That is partly because nobody has ever been stupid enough to say that Scotland is an ethnicity in a genetic sense. A kingdom of Scotland existed long before anybody talked of a Scottish people. So that is one thing we have been spared. — Neal Ascherson

I believe to be a leader is to enable others to embrace a vision, initiative or assignment in a way that they feel a sense of purpose, ownership, personal engagement, and common cause. I was very affected as a child by my father's positive example as a civic leader who inspired others to share his commitment to improving our community. — Melanne Verveer

It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society. — Alexander McCall Smith

Alwasy remember ... We are engaged in a battle for the continuation of
our capitalist, free-market economic model; our way of life; and our
liberty. The enemy is anticapitalist, believes in big government, embraces
collectivist ideologies, and has, over the past century, infiltrated every
level of our government and most of the banking industry. They don't care about patriotism, although they may sport the red, white, and
blue and the stars and stripes on their bumper stickers. They don't
care about personal responsibility or civic duty. They don't share your
sense of honor. All they care about is power and control over your
money and every aspect of your life. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

If parents instill a sense of civic-mindedness - and there is no better way to do that than by example - their children will probably follow. — Sandra Day O'Connor