Citizenship in the Words of Eminent Americans
Benjamin Franklin
“Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another. And this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know.”
— Letter published in The New England Courant, July 9, 1722
John Jay
“A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people, at a very early period, to institute a federal government to preserve and perpetuate it. They formed it almost as soon as they had a political existence”
— Federalist No. 2, October 31, 1787
“Distrust naturally creates distrust, and by nothing is good-will and kind conduct more speedily changed than by invidious jealousies and uncandid imputations, whether expressed or implied.”
— Federalist No. 5, November 10, 1787
Thomas Paine
“He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.”
— Dissertation on First Principles of Government, December 23, 1791
Alexander Hamilton
“If it were to be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of security in a Republic? the answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last. It is by this, in a great degree, that the rich and powerful are to be restrained from enterprises against the common liberty—operated upon by the influence of a general sentiment, by their interest in the principle, and by the obstacles which the habit it produces erects against innovation and encroachment. It is by this, in a still greater degree, that caballers, intriguers, and demagogues are prevented from climbing on the shoulders of faction to the tempting seats of usurpation and tyranny.”
— Alexander Hamilton’s August 28, 1794 letter to the American Daily Advertiser.
George Washington
"Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations."
— George Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17, 1796
“Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”
— George Washington’s Farewell Address, September 17, 1796
Mercy Otis Warren
"It is necessary for every American, with becoming energy to endeavor to stop the dissemination of principles evidently destructive of the cause for which they have bled. It must be the combined virtue of the rulers and of the people to do this, and to rescue and save their civil and religious rights from the outstretched arm of tyranny, which may appear under any mode or form of government."
— History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution, 1805
John Adams
“There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.”
— Diary entry, Spring 1772.
“Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives. We ought to do all we can.”
— Letter to Benjamin Rush, April 18, 1808
Abigail Adams
“I have felt a Disposition to quarrel with him several times; but have restrained myself; and only observed to him mildly, that merit; not titles, gave a man preeminence in our Country.”
— Letter to Mary Smith Cranch, July 16, 1784
Thomas Jefferson
"Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights."
— Letter to Richard Price, January 8, 17896
"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society."
— Memo to George Hammond, May 29, 1792
"The moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a state of nature accompany them into a state of society."
— “Opinion on the Treaties with France” memo to President Washington, April 28, 1793.
"We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties."
— Second inaugural address, March 4, 1805
James Madison
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both”
— Letter to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822.
James Monroe
“We must support our rights or lose our character, and with it, perhaps, our liberties. A people who fail to do it can scarcely be said to hold a place among independent nations. National honor is national property of the highest value. The sentiment in the mind of every citizen is national strength. It ought therefore to be cherished.”
— First inaugural address, March 4, 1817
“It is only when the people become ignorant and corrupt, when they degenerate into a populace, that they are incapable of exercising their sovereignty.”
— First inaugural address, March 4, 1817
Henry Clay
“A citizen, as long as a single pulsation remains, is under an obligation to exert his utmost energies in the service of his country, if necessary, whether in private or public station.”
— March 7, 1829 speech in Washington D.C., sourced from The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay.
“I would rather be right than to be President.”
— February 7, 1839 speech on the Senate floor
“Sir, we have had hard words, bitter words, bitter thoughts, unpleasant feelings toward each other in the progress of this great measure. Let us forget them. Let us sacrifice these feelings. Let us go to the altar of our country and swear, as the oath was taken of old, that we will stand by her; that we will support her; that we will uphold her Constitution; that we will preserve her union; and that we will pass this great, comprehensive, and healing system of measures, which will hush all the jarring elements and bring peace and tranquility to our homes.”
— February 6, 1850 speech on the Senate floor
Andrew Jackson
“The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.”
— Letter to William B Lewis, August 19, 1841
Daniel Webster
“Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint.”
Abraham Lincoln
“Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others.”
— Address before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield — January 27, 1838
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
— First inaugural address, March 4, 1861
Frederick Douglass
“Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one's thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power. Thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers, founded in injustice and wrong, are sure to tremble, if men are allowed to reason.”
— “A Plea for Free Speech in Boston.” Tremont Temple Baptist church address, December 3, 1860
"In a composite nation like ours, as before the Law, there should be no rich no poor, no high, no low, no white, no black, but common country, common citizenship, equal rights, and a common destiny."
— 1882 quotation sent to manuscript collector William F. Gable
“The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.”
— Speech commemorating the 23rd anniversary of Emancipation, April 16, 1885
Clara Barton
"An institution or reform movement that is not selfish, must originate in the recognition of some evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering, or diminishing the sum of happiness. I may be compelled to face danger, but never fear it, and while our soldiers can stand and fight, I can stand and feed and nurse them.”
— December 12, 1862 letter to Martha Elvira Stone
Ulysses S. Grant
“Laws are to govern all alike — those opposed as well as those who favor them. I know no method to secure the repeal of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution.”
— First Inaugural address, March 4, 1869
“The country having just emerged from a great rebellion, many questions will come before it for settlement in the next four years which preceding Administrations have never had to deal with. In meeting these, it is desirable that they should be approached calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride, remembering that the greatest good to the greatest number is the object to be attained. This requires security of person, property, and free religious and political opinion in every part of our common country, without regard to local prejudice. All laws to secure these ends will receive my best efforts for their enforcement.”
— First Inaugural address, March 4, 1869
James A. Garfield
“Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. If the next centennial does not find us a great nation... it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.”
— July 4, 1876 Centennial address, The Works of James Abram Garfield: Volume 2 (1882).
Theodore Roosevelt
“The essential first man to be a good citizen is his possession of the home virtues which we think when we call a man by the emphatic adjective of manly. No man can be a good citizen who is not a good husband and good father, who is not honest in its dealings with other men and women, loyal to his friends and fearless in the presence of his enemies , who has not had a sound heart, a healthy mind and a healthy body, just as no amount of attention to civil rights will save a nation where domestic life is undermined, or there is a lack of virtues harsh military alone can ensure the position of a country in the world.
— “Duties of American Citizenship” address, January 26, 1883
“It should be obvious in this country that every man must devote a reasonable share of his time doing his duty in the political life of the community. No man has the right to shirk his political duties under whatever plea of pleasure or business.”
— “Duties of American Citizenship” address, January 26, 1883
“People who say they do not have time to attend to politics are simply saying they are unfit to live in a free community. Their place is under the despotism, or whether they simply do nothing but vote, you can take despotism tempered by an occasional plebiscite, like Napoleon seconds.”
— “Duties of American Citizenship” address, January 26, 1883
"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
— May 7, 1918 editorial in the Kansas City Star
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
“Nothing strengthens the judgment and quickens the conscience like individual responsibility. Nothing adds such dignity to character as the recognition of one's self-sovereignty; the right to an equal place, everywhere conceded - a place earned by personal merit, not an artificial attainment by inheritance, wealth, family and position. Conceding, then, that the responsibilities of life rest equally on man and woman, that their destiny is the same, they need the same preparation for time and eternity.”
— “Solitude of Self” address before the U.S. Congress, January 18, 1892
Susan B. Anthony
“Are you going to cater to the whims and prejudices of people? We draw out from other people our own thought. If, when you go out to organize, you go with a broad spirit, you will create and call out breadth and toleration.”
— January 28, 1896 remarks to the National-American Woman Suffrage Association, courtesy of The Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.
William Jennings Bryan
“Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.”
— Cross of Gold speech, July 9, 1896
John Marshall Harlan
“Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.”
— Plessy v Ferguson dissent, 1896
William McKinley
“There are some national questions in the solution of which patriotism should exclude partisanship. Magnifying their difficulties will not take them off our hands nor facilitate their adjustment. Distrust of the capacity, integrity, and high purposes of the American people will not be an inspiring theme for future political contests. Dark pictures and gloomy forebodings are worse than useless. These only becloud, they do not help to point the way of safety and honor.”
— March 4, 1901 inaugural address
Mark Twain
“The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.”
— “The Czar’s Soliloquy,” published in March 1905 by The American Review.
Booker T. Washington
“In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their souls in a way to permit them to come into contact with other souls–with the great outside world. No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world. In meeting men, in many places, I have found that the happiest people are those who do the most for others; the most miserable are those who do the least.”
— Up from Slavery (1901)
Woodrow Wilson
“You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.”
— October 25, 1913 address at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania
Louis D. Brandeis
“What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty; and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.”
— July 4, 1915 oration
Robert La Follette
“Let no man think we can deny civil liberty to others and retain it for ourselves. When zealous agents of the Government arrest suspected "radicals" without warrant, hold them without prompt trial, deny them access to counsel and admission of bail....we have shorn the Bill of Rights of its sanctity.”
— 1916 acceptance speech of the North Dakota Republicans primary endorsement
Calvin Coolidge
“But if we wish to continue to be distinctively American, we must continue to make that term comprehensive enough to embrace the legitimate desires of a civilized and enlightened people determined in all their relations to pursue a conscientious life. We can not permit ourselves to be narrowed and dwarfed by slogans and phrases. It is not the adjective, but the substantive, which is of real importance. It is not the name of the action, but the result of the action, which is the chief concern.”
— March 4, 1925 inaugural address
Herbert Hoover
“There are some principles that cannot be compromised. Either we shall have a society based upon ordered liberty and the initiative of the individual, or we shall have a planned society that means dictation no matter what you call it or who does it. There is no half-way ground. They cannot be mixed.”
— “This Challenge to Liberty” address to the 1936 Republican National Convention, courtesy of Addresses Upon the American Road (1933 - 1938), p. 216-227
Charles Curtis
(part Native-American; U.S. Vice President under Herbert Hoover)
“There are only two ways to be quite unprejudiced and impartial. One is to be completely ignorant. The other is to be completely indifferent. Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in
— Curtis in A Commonplace Book (1957).
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
"We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."
— “Greeting to the American Committee for Protection of Foreign-born” address, January 9, 1940
“Since the beginning of our American history, we have been engaged in change -- in a perpetual peaceful revolution -- a revolution which goes on steadily, quietly adjusting itself to changing conditions--without the concentration camp or the quick-lime in the ditch. The world order which we seek is the cooperation of free countries, working together in a friendly, civilized society. This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women; and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights or keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose. To that high concept there can be no end save victory.”
— January 6, 1941 State of the Union address to the U.S. Congress
William O. Douglas
“The struggle is always between the individual and his sacred right to express himself and the power structure that seeks conformity, suppression, and obedience.”
— Go East, Young Man: The Early Years; The Autobiography of William O. Douglas, March 12, 1974
Eleanor Roosevelt
“Learning to be a good citizen is learning to live to the maximum of one’s abilities and opportunities, and every subject should be taught every child with this in view.”
— “Good Citizenship: The Purpose of Education.” Pictorial Review article.
Albert Einstein
“As long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.”
— The Einstein memorial, unveiled April 22, 1979
Dwight D. Eisenhower
"The freedom of the individual and his willingness to follow real leadership are at the core of America's strength."
— June 9, 1946 commencement address at Norwich University, Vermont
"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both."
— January 20, 1953 inaugural address
"The general limits of your freedom are merely these: that you do not trespass upon the equal rights of others."
— April 22, 1954 address to the National Society of Daughters of the American Revolution
Felix Frankfuter
“It is important not to give the appearance of a predisposed mind. And it is more important not to let the mind become predisposed.”
— Of Law and Men, 1956
Earl Warren
“A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over.”
— A Republic, if You Can Keep It by Earl Warren, published April 1, 1972
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.”
— January 20, 1961 inaugural address
“The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”
— June 11, 1963 televised address
Martin Luther King Jr
“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.”
— “The Birth of a New Age” address in Chicago, August 11, 1956
Cesar Chavez
“Being of service is not enough. You must become a servant of the people. When you do, you can demand their commitment in return.”
— November 1984 speech at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, courtesy of Influential Latinos — Cesar Chavez: Civil Rights Activists (2015).
Robert Francis Kennedy
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
— "Day of Affirmation" speech June 6th, 1966
John Wayne
“It’s kind of a sad thing when a normal love of country makes you a super patriot. I do think we have a pretty wonderful country, and I thank God that He chose me to live here.”
— 1974 speech at Harvard
Nelson Rockefeller
"America is not just a power; it is a promise. It is not enough for our country to be extraordinary in might; it must be exemplary in meaning."
— Nelson Rockefeller in Unity, Freedom and Peace: A Blueprint for Tomorrow (1968).
Warren Burger
“There can be no assumption that today's majority is ‘right’ and the Amish or others like them are ‘wrong.’ A way of life that is odd or even erratic but interferes with no right or interests of others is not to be condemned because it is different.”
— Court opinion for Wisconsin v Yoder, delivered by Warren Burger on May 15, 1972
Thurgood Marshall
“America must get to work. In the chill climate in which we live, we must go against the prevailing wind. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent from the poverty of vision and the absence of moral leadership. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.”
— July 4, 1992 acceptance speech for the Prestigious Liberty Award
Arnold Schwarzenegger
“Patriotism isn’t just the blind love of our flag. It is the work we do to improve our country for every American. I want the unlimited opportunity that drew me here in 1968 to exist for every American.”
— May 31, 2020 opinion to The Atlantic
