Quotes about Citizenship

Everybody wants to talk about their rights and privileges. Twenty-five years ago, people talked about their obligations and responsibilities. - as spoken by Lou Holtz, former Notre Dame Coach

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Education should be the handmaid of citizenship.

Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.

Our mission is at once the oldest and the most basic of this country: to right wrong, to do justice, to serve man. Because all Americans just must have the right to vote. And we are going to give them that right. All Americans must have the privileges of citizenship regardless of race. And they are going to have those privileges of citizenship regardless of race.

There can no longer be anyone too poor to vote.

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you-ask what you can do for your country. My citizens of the world. Ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

I was born an American, I live like an American, I will die an American.

My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

All distinctions of birth or of rank have been abolished. All citizens, whether native or adopted, are placed upon terms of precise equality. All are entitled to equal rights and equal protection.

After the signing of the Constitution, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman on the street, "What have you given us, sir?" Franklin Responded, "A Republic, if you can keep it." A critical moment in history has come; our Republic is in jeopardy. Can we keep it? If the answer to that question, as I fear, is "no," then we have no one to blame but ourselves.

If we continue to stand up for our rights, none of us alive today will ever have to pick up a weapon against our government. The bad news is that if those rights are watered down or taken away, the risk of tyranny will increase with each passing generation.