Upstanding Citizen Quotes

A brick could be used to raise your status as an upstanding citizen. Don't get too excited, though. It'll only raise you up about three inches. ~ Jarod Kintz

Six foot eight and all asshole. ~ Lauren Beukes

Wait. Far be it for me to say this" - Hamish looked around the compartment - "and if anyone tells Uncle Eddie I suggested being an upstanding citizen I'll kill 'em, but aren't there ... laws and stuff? I mean, can't you ... you know ... sue him or something?" asked the boy who had once stolen an entire circus, all three rings. ~ Ally Carter

My grandfather was an ordinary British citizen in the time of British Raj. He used to have Bengali friends from whom I learnt Bengali. ~ Fahmid Hassan Prohor

Here's a proposal, offered only partly in jest: no resident of the United States, whether born here or abroad, should get to be a citizen until age 18, at which time each such resident has to take a test. ~ Eric Liu

One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him. ~ Harry Allen Overstreet

The question is, does the educated citizen know he is only a cog in an ecological mechanism? That if he will work with that mechanism his mental wealth and his material wealth can expand indefinitely? But that if he refuses to work with it, it will ultimately grind him to dust? If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for? ~ Aldo Leopold

Who lives as a citizen, may write as a philosopher - but write as a philosopher, it is to teach materialism! ~ Julien Offray De La Mettrie

As a comedian, as a person, as a citizen, as a mammal - in all of those areas, I am looking forward to the end of the Bush administration with every fiber of my being. ~ Jon Stewart

At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn't want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed. So they fought, and won, and we all of us, living and yet to be born, must be forever profoundly grateful. ~ Stephen E. Ambrose

I find no contradiction between being a Highlander, a Scot, a citizen of the U.K. and a citizen of the European Union at one and the same time. ~ Charles Kennedy

The efforts of governments alone will never be enough. In the end, the people must choose and the people must help themselves. ~ John F. Kennedy

In great cities, spaces as well as places are designed and built: walking, witnessing, being in public, are as much part of the design and purpose as is being inside to eat, sleep, make shoes or love or music. The word citizen has to do with cities, and the ideal city is organized around citizenship
around participation in public life. ~ Rebecca Solnit

Science is the global civilization of which I am a citizen. The spread of its democratic ethic and its unifying powers provides my faith in humanity. The astonishing depths of wonders in the universe, continuously revealed by science is my temple. The capacity of the informed human mind, liberated at last by the understanding that we are alone and thus the sole stewards of earth, is my religion. The potential of humanity to turn this planet into a paradise for future generations is my afterlife. ~ E. O. Wilson

A committed citizens can move a country. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Orson Welles was a force of nature, who just came in and wiped the slate clean. And Citizen Kane is the greatest risk-taking of all time in film. I don't think anything had even seen anything quite like it. The photography was also unlike anything we'd seen. The odd coldness of the filmmaker towards the character reflects his own egomania and power, and yet a powerful empathy for all of them
it's very interesting. It still holds up, and it's still shocking. It takes storytelling and throws it up in the air. ~ Martin Scorsese

You're a sovereign as a citizen. If you're not involved in your government, you're not doing your job. In the long run that's very bad for the Republic. ~ Michael Novak

On Aditya," First Citizen Yaggo declared, "there are no classes, and on Aditya everybody works. 'From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.'"
"On Aditya," an elderly Counselor four places to the right of him said loudly to his neighbor, "they don't call them classes, they call them sociological categories, and they have nineteen of them. And on Aditya, they don't call them nonworkers, they call them occupational reservists, and they have more of them than we do."
"But of course, I was born a king," Ranulf said sadly and nobly. "I have a duty to my people."
"No, they don't vote at all," Lord Koreff was telling the Counselor on his left. "On Durendal, you have to pay taxes before you can vote."
"On Aditya the crime of taxation does not exist," the First Citizen told the Prime Minister.
"On Aditya," the Counselor four places down said to his neighbor, "there's nothing to tax. The state owns all the property, and if the Imperial Constitution and the Space Navy let them, the State would own all the people, too. Don't tell me about Aditya. First big-ship command I had was the old Invictus, 374, and she was based on Aditya for four years, and I'd sooner have spent that time in orbit around Niffelheim."...
"But if they don't have votes to sell, what do they live on?" a Counselor asked in bewilderment.
"The nobility supports them; the landowners, the trading barons, the industrial lords. The more nonworking adherents they have ~ H. Beam Piper

It is probably a pity that every citizen of each state cannot visit all the others, to see the differences, to learn what we have in common, and come back with a richer, fuller understanding of America - in all its beauty, in all its dignity, in all its strength, in support of moral principles. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Individuality is the aim of political liberty. By leaving the citizen as much freedom of action and of being as comports with order and the rights of others, the institutions render him truly a freeman. He is left to pursue his means of happiness in his own manner. ~ James F. Cooper

We live in a world of pomp and muscle, of strutting that glorifies jet thrust and far-flying warheads. It is the same kind of strutting that produced the misery of the days of Caesar, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Hitler. In this kind of world it is not easy to recognize that -

"A babe born in a stable of the village of Bethlehem,

"A boy reared as a carpenter of Nazareth,

"A citizen of a conquered and subdued nation,

"A man whose mortal footsteps never went beyond a radius of 150 miles, who never received a school degree, who never spoke from a great pulpit, who never owned a home, who traveled afoot and without purse

"Truly, his coming, ministry, and place in our eyes is as foretold by the ancient prophet Isaiah: 'For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.' (Isa. 9:6.) ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

As a citizen, you have an obligation to the countrys tax system, but you also have an obligation to yourself to know your rights under the law and possible tax deductions
and to claim every one of them. ~ Donald Alexander

We have started something called the Corporate Services Corps. Now, it was modeled after the Peace Corps from long ago, the 1960s. And the idea was in this modern day and age, how do you get IBM'ers around the world to be global citizens? You know, globally aware, contribute, understand how to work in that environment, but do it on scale. ~ Ginni Rometty

The universe has no prince or king that it [Rome] would consider equal to its humblest citizen. ~ Pierre Corneille

Many of these ideas you like - wouldn't they scare most people? Its all very Isaac Asimov. I've thought about how to implement this. Speaking for myself, I never want to go to the dentist, I never want to go to the various doctors. So if someone told me to implant something in my body, as a futurist, I'd be down, but as a citizen I would think it is annoying. ~ Anonymous

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer. ~ Mitch Daniels

In a country of ideas, consciousness is its' citizen. ~ Toba Beta

To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

I consider myself a free man and a citizen of the world. ~ Gerard Depardieu

A government which lays taxes on the people not required by urgent public necessity and sound public policy is not a protector of liberty, but an instrument of tyranny. It condemns the citizen to servitude. ~ Calvin Coolidge

We didn't grow up overly religious, but there was an understanding that you had a duty as a citizen to help your fellow man. ~ John Morgridge

We encourage China to engage as a good global citizen and we are clear-eyed about where differences do lie. ~ Julia Gillard

But even democracies like ours are rife with corruption. The founding fathers had the right idea. They never envisioned professional politicians. They wanted citizen legislators, leaving their farms for a few years to serve their fellow man. A civic responsibility like jury duty. But under our current system, you almost have to be a megalomaniac to have interest in entering the sewer that is politics. And success in this realm requires that backstabbing, shamelessness, lying, and manipulation become an art form. ~ Douglas E. Richards

Now, I do not, on any level, possess the expertise to argue about the science of anthropological global warming. Nor do you, most likely. This certainly doesn't mean an average citizen has the duty to do the lock step. ~ David Harsanyi

Melania Trump wanted two things: a sugar daddy and to be an American citizen. She got, instead, the worse version of the American dream. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

Today, the Iraqi citizen sees that America is coming and wants to occupy his country and kill him, and he is willing to experience for himself what happened in Palestine. ~ Bashar Al-Assad

You know, I don't think of myself as anything like a 'global citizen' or anything of the sort. I am just a Nigerian who's comfortable in other places. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

It is necessary for the average citizen, if he wishes to make a living, to avoid incurring the hostility of certain big men. And these big men have an outlook - religious, moral, and political - with which they expect their employees to agree, at least outwardly. ~ Bertrand Russell

Everybody enjoys the freedom he deserves, which is measured by the stature and dignity of his person or by his function, and not by the abstract and elementary fact of merely being a 'human being' or a 'citizen'. ~ Julius Evola

This conversation revealed to Odo a third conception of the religious idea. In Piedmont religion imposed itself as a military discipline, the enforced duty of the Christian citizen to the heavenly state; to the Duke it was a means of purchasing spiritual immunity from the consequences of bodily weakness; to the Bishop, it replaced the panem et circenses of ancient Rome. Where, in all this, was the share of those whom Christ had come to save? Where was Saint Francis's devotion to his heavenly bride, the Lady Poverty? Though here and there a good parish priest like Crescenti ministered to the temporal wants of the peasantry, it was only the free-thinker and the atheist who, at the risk of life and fortune, laboured for their moral liberation. Odo listened with a saddened heart, thinking, as he followed his host through the perfumed shade of the gardens, and down ~ Edith Wharton

Back in 2008, unable to come to terms with its many creditors, Vallejo had declared bankruptcy. Eighty percent of the city's budget - and the lion's share of the claims that had thrown it into bankruptcy - were wrapped up in the pay and benefits of public safety workers. Relations between the police and the firefighters, on the one hand, and the citizens, on the other, were at historic lows. The public safety workers thought that the city was out to screw them on their contracts; the citizenry thought that the public safety workers were using fear as a tool to extort money from them. The local joke was that "P.D." stands for "Pay or Die." The city council meetings had become exercises in outrage: at one, a citizen arrived and tossed a severed pig's head onto the floor. ~ Michael Lewis

A thoughtless citizen of a democracy is a delinquent citizen of a democracy, ~ Leon Wieseltier

Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, concludes his book The Conquest of Happiness by describing a happy person thus: "Such a man feels himself a citizen of the universe, enjoying freely the spectacle that it offers and the joy that it affords, untroubled by the thoughts of death because he feels himself not really separated from those who will come after him. It is in such a profound instinctive union with the stream of life that the greatest joy is to be found. ~ Eric Weiner

The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Because finally, 'the equal right of every citizen to the free exercise of his religion according to the dictates of conscience' is held by the same tenure with all his other rights. If we recur to its origin, it is equally the gift of nature; if we weigh its importance, it cannot be less dear to us; if we consider the 'Declaration of those rights which pertain to the good people of Virginia, as the basis and foundation of government,' it is enumerated with equal solemnity, or rather studied emphasis. ~ James Madison

The Arab soul is broken by poverty, unemployment, and general recession. The Tunisian revolution is not far from us. The Arab citizen entered an unprecedented state of anger and frustration. ~ Amr Moussa

There is no method by which an average citizen can effectively fight the White House in the media. ~ Linda Tripp