Civic Value Quotes & Sayings

It was a relationship born out of loneliness between two people who couldn't be more different. We took from each other what we needed. We left nothing behind for anyone else. He drank me dry. I ate him whole. We were dysfunctional. We were dangerous to each other. — A Meredith Walters

So dispatched, Aristagoras traveled to Athens - the most powerful city in Greece. Here he changed tactics: instead of speaking with the ruler, he addressed the crowd (in accordance with another of Herodotus's rules, that it seems to be easier to fool a crowd than a single person) and appealed directly to the Athenians to help the Ionians. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I swear, when that woman dies, she'll be deader than everybody else.~Pattiecake from Laid Out and Candle Lit — Ann Everett

The things I like to find in a story are punch and poetry. — Sean O Faolain

After years of telling corporate citizens to 'trust the system,' many companies must relearn instead to trust their people - and encourage their people to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power. — Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Good home-school educational plans have the kids in groups with other children often and consistently. Because common sense dictates that isolating people is never good and home-schooled children really benefit from being in those type of programs. — Rosalind Wiseman

The standard story of cultural conflict in America has conservative Christians defending established forms of social authority, while Progressives see themselves as challenging established norms and institutions, a self-assessment that the media accept at face value. The reality is the opposite. The counter-culturalism of the Faithful gives them an independent spirit. The committed core of Christians in America increasingly lives on the peripheries of cultural and institutional power. The Engaged Progressives, in command of civic institutions, are the establishmentarians. A — R. R. Reno

The season of Lent is puzzling to many. Denying ourselves our favorite treats or habits - even for a short time - seems archaic in our I-want-it-now culture. Lent is a plodding, definitive crescendo that leads up to the cacophonous noise of Good Friday and the gorgeous aria of Easter. It's a season marked by deliberateness and intentionality. — Anonymous

This work is not easy, and it never goes smoothly. Because we are hopelessly committed to both individual and group effectiveness, groups committed to public or civic value are rarely permanent. Instead, groups need to acquire a culture that rewards their members for doing that hard work. It takes this kind of group effort to get what we need, not just what we want; understanding how to create and maintain is one of the great challenges of our era. — Clay Shirky

Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value. — Bertrand Russell

I'm Winston Wolfe. I solve problems. — Harvey Keitel

'The Glass Castle' by Jeannette Walls is the quintessential dysfunctional family. — Sara Shepard

Ancient recipients of instant news probably couldn't do very much about it, for instance. Xerxes would still need three months to get his army together, and he might not get home for years. — Peter Singer

We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient. — Golda Meir

Public and civic value require commitment and hard work among the core group of participants. It also requires that these groups be self-governing and submit to constraints that help them ignore distracting and entertaining material and stay focused instead of some sophisticated task. — Clay Shirky

Individual Greeks are delightful: funny, warm, smart, and good company. I left two dozen interviews saying to myself, "What great people!" They do not share the sentiment about one another: the hardest thing to do in Greece is to get one Greek to compliment another behind his back. No success of any kind is regarded without suspicion. Everyone is pretty sure everyone is cheating on his taxes, or bribing politicians, or taking bribes, or lying about the value of his real estate. And this total absence of faith in one another is self-reinforcing. The epidemic of lying and cheating and stealing makes any sort of civic life impossible; the collapse of civic life only encourages more lying, cheating, and stealing. Lacking faith in one another, they fall back on themselves and their families. — Michael Lewis

As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared. — Arundhati Roy

The whole, 'Is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good - that's the really big challenge. — Clay Shirky

There's no wobble in Bush. If anything, the opposite. Right after hello, the next words out of his mouth are: I've never been more convinced that the decisions I made are the right decisions. — Rich Lowry