Responsible Citizens Quotes & Sayings

Students need to be educated on how to be good citizens of their country and what their rights and responsibilities are as members of society. The same issues need to be addressed with regard to the emerging digital society, so that students can learn how to be responsible and productive members of that society. — Mike Ribble

How can the child learn to be a free and responsible citizen when the teacher is bound? — John Dewey

When the Constitution gave us the right to bear arms, it also made us responsible for using them properly. It's not fair of us as citizens to lean more heavily on one side of that equation than on the other. — Jesse Ventura

Congress is responsible for everything and unable to do anything, hated by the public creditors, insulted by the soldiers and unsupported by the citizens. — Benjamin Hawkins

Character, not passion keeps marriages together long enough to do their work of raising children into mature, responsible, productive citizens. — Frank Pittman

I would rather have as my patron a host of anonymous citizens digging into their own pockets for the price of a book or a magazine than a small body of enlightened and responsible men administering public funds. I would rather chance my personal vision of truth striking home here and there in the chaos of publication that exists than attempt to filter it through a few sets of official, honorably public-spirited scruples. — John Updike

In fact, the legal system is in part responsible for their very size and growth. And too often when the individual finds himself in conflict with these forces, the legal system sides with the giant institution, not the small businessman or private citizen. — Edward Kennedy

The JFK assassination itself has been dissected to pieces by obsessed
researchers like me. Suffice to say that a few days of intense study of the
available record will convince any honest person, beyond any reasonable
doubt, that Lee Harvey Oswald was not responsible for the crime. The coverup
was so clear and obvious in nature, and so shabbily constructed, that the
conclusion is inescapable that the conspirators who killed him wanted the
kind of controversy that soon exploded, shortly after the first wave of private
citizens began to look at the data. — Donald Jeffries

The more profit we make, the more stores we can open, the more donations we can make to our community, the more responsible citizens we can be for the environment. It's all interactive. It's all connected together. There's no separation. — John Mackey

We must trust in him as our Saviour and submit to him as our Lord; and then go on to take our place as loyal members of the church and responsible citizens in the community. — John R.W. Stott

Our political concepts, according to which we have to assume responsibility for all public affairs within our reach regardless of personal "guilt", because we are held responsible as citizens for everything that our government does in the name of the country, may lead us into an intolerable situation of global responsibility. The solidarity of mankind may well turn out to be an unbearable burden, and it is not surprising that the common reactions to it are political apathy, isolationist nationalism, or desperate rebellion against all powers that be rather than enthusiasm or a desire for a revival of humanism. — Hannah Arendt

I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public. I did this clearly at my own jeopardy and I am prepared to answer to all the consequences of this decision. — Daniel Ellsberg

I do recognize the most valuable work being done across the country is that work being done inside the four walls in our homes. And let us not forget how important the work of the mother and father are to raising responsible citizens. — Ann Romney

Schools exist in America and have always existed to train responsible citizens of the United States of America. If they don't do that, it's very hard to hold us together as a country, because it's shared values that hold us together. — Rudy Giuliani

The SuperPACs and the Citizens United ruling that gives corporations a voice in the political process are all bad news. They made it so you can now lie, and the politician being promoted on that lie will not be held responsible for it. — Jesse Ventura

Wold domination is exhausting and cliche. People ought to just focus on being individual responsible citizens of the earth instead of assholes. — Rachel Cohn

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent. — Jonathan Sacks

I would say that when I write prose I'm a more socially responsible person. I'm much more a citizen of the world. But the instability of the poetry, the emotional jaggedness, is also me. — Vijay Seshadri

A second key area where you are called to make a contribution is in showing concern for the environment. This is not only because this country, more than many others, is likely to be seriously affected by climate change. You are called to care for Creation not only as responsible citizens, but also as followers of Christ! — Pope Francis

If tomorrow the Muslims of France were to convert to Catholicism or renounce all religion, it wouldn't make the least bit of difference to the racists - they would continue to hold these foreigners or French citizens of foreign descent responsible for every affliction. — Charb

People in every nation enhance the social dimension of their lives by acting as committed and responsible citizens. — Pope Francis

Let me get this straight. A mentally ill madman goes on a shooting spree to assassinate a United States Congressperson ... and the lesson learned by liberals is that guns must be taken away from law-abiding citizens? Really? What's the connection between a mentally ill nutcase and perfectly sane, responsible people? There is none. — Wayne Allyn Root

The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, either by job-training or by industry-subsidized research. It's proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. This cannot be done by gathering or "accessing" what we now call "information" - which is to say facts without context and therefore without priority. A proper education enables young people to put their lives in order, which means knowing what things are more important than other things; it means putting first things first. — Wendell Berry

Ten responsible and rational young citizens are sufficient to clean up the mess of a thousand old superstitious citizens. — Abhijit Naskar

As Americans, we have a long history with firearms. We also have a government built on compromise, so here is the compromise I propose: Ban assault rifles and handguns for everyone except police and military personnel. These weapons are made to kill humans and should be strictly limited. At the same time, allow responsible citizens to own rifles and shotguns. Rifles are for hunting big-game animals, shotguns are for hunting birds; non-automatic versions of these weapons should be available for those with an interest in hunting or target shooting. — Nick Symmonds

Also during this era, writing was considered superior to reading in society. Readers during this time were considered passive citizens, simply because they did not produce a product. Michel de Certeau argued that the elites of the Age of Enlightenment were responsible for this general belief. Michel de Certeau believed that reading required venturing into an author's land, but taking away what the reader wanted specifically. Writing was viewed as a superior art to reading during this period, due to the hierarchical constraints the era initiated. — Leo Tolstoy

As Dr. Spock points out, raising happy children is an elusive aim compared to the more concrete aims of parenting in the past: creating competent children in certain kinds of work; and creating morally responsible citizens who fulfill a prescribed set of community obligations. The fact is, those bygone goals are probably more constructive
and achievable. Not all children will grow up to be happy, in spite of their parents' most valiant efforts, and all children are unhappy somewhere along the way. — Jennifer Senior

Our government should do everything it can to ensure the successful prosecution of those responsible for the murders of U.S. citizens abroad. It should provide resources as needed, and it should make it clear to the authorities in Belgrade that inaction does have repercussions on bilateral relations. — Tim Bishop

We have a right to expect a police force that protects our citizens and behaves in a responsible manner ... in the American conscience there is no room for bigotry and racism. — George H. W. Bush

If the government of this country tramples the faith and values of its citizens, history will hold those in power responsible for the violent convulsions that follow. — Randall Terry

Hamas is responsible for countless homicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israeli citizens. They have waged a terror war with the sole intent of murdering innocent people. — Vito Fossella

I see my buildings as pieces of cities, and in my designs I try to make them into responsible and contributing citizens. — Cesar Pelli

Any woman who has devoted herself to raising children has experienced the hollow praise that only thinly conceals smug dismissal. In a culture that measures worth and achievement almost solely in terms of money, the intensive work of rearing responsible adults counts for little. One of the most intriguing questions in economic history is how this came to be; how mothers came to be excluded from the ranks of productive citizens. How did the demanding job of rearing a modern child come to be termed baby-sitting? When did caring for children become a 'labor of love,;' smothered under a blanket of sentimentality that hides its economic importance? — Ann Crittenden

What frightens me about America today is that in the large majority there is no active sense of the value of the individual: few citizens feel that they are the Republic, responsible for what happens. And when the individual in a democracy ceases to feel his importance, then there is grave danger that he will give over his freedom, if not to a Fascist State, then to the advertising men or Publicity Agents or to the newspaper he happens to read. — May Sarton

Still it is true that many same-sex couples want nothing more than to join society as fully integrated socially responsible family-centered taxpaying Little League-coaching nation-serving respectably married citizens. So why not welcome them in Why not recruit them by the vanload to sweep in on heroic wings and save the flagging and battered old institution of matrimony from a bunch of apathetic ne'er-do-well heterosexual deadbeats like me — Elizabeth Gilbert

One of the pre - requisites for children becoming proactive and responsible citizens is the availability of enough role models inside and outside the school. — Azim Premji

We are bound by ideals that teach us what it means to be citizens. Every child must be taught these ideals. Every citizen must uphold them ... I ask you to be citizens. Citizens, not spectators. Citizens, not subjects. Responsible citizens building communities of service and a nation of character. — George W. Bush

A "race to innocence" is what occurs when individuals assume that they are innocent of complicity in structures of domination and oppression.25 This concept captures the understandable assumption made by new immigrants or children of recent immigrants to any country. They cannot be responsible, they assume, for what occurred in their adopted country's past. Neither are those who are already citizens guilty, even if they are descendants of slave owners, Indian killers, or Andrew Jackson himself. Yet, in a settler society that has not come to terms with its past, whatever historical trauma was entailed in settling the land affects the assumptions and behavior of living generations at any given time, including immigrants and the children of recent immigrants. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Without laughter life on our planet would be intolerable. So important is laughter to us that humanity highly rewards members of one of the most unusual professions on earth, those who make a living by inducing laughter in others. This is very strange if you stop to think of it: that otherwise sane and responsible citizens should devote their professional energies to causing others to make sharp, explosive barking-like exhalations. — Steve Allen

The story is about being loyal to the truth as a nation, that citizens of a democracy are collectively responsible for what their troops do in war, good or bad. — Kevin Sites

The welfare state inhibits the maturation of its young citizens into responsible adults — Dennis Prager

The citizen lives in each of us. In the days of Brezhnev, Andropov, Gorbachev and Yeltsin, I was constantly trying to suppress the responsible citizen in me. I told myself that I was, after all, an artist. — Vladimir Sorokin

In an ideal society, mothers and fathers would produce potty- trained, civilized, responsible new citizens while government and corporate leaders would provide a safe, healthy, economically just community. — Mary Blakely

Both for practical reasons and for mathematically verifiable moral reasons, authority and responsibility must be equal - else a balancing takes place as surely as current flows between points of unequal potential. To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority ... other than through the tragic logic of history ... No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead - and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple. — Robert A. Heinlein