James Howard Kunstler Quotes

Please, please, stop referring to yourselves as 'consumers.' OK? Consumers are different than citizens. Consumers do not have obligations, responsibilities and duties to their fellow human beings.

I abhor the word "consumer." Consumers, unlike citizens, have no implicit duties, obligations, or responsibilities to the common good. It's a degrading term. The use of it degrades the public discussion.

No Georgian has the right to evade or neglect his duties and responsibilities.

What were we told to do? Get back on those airplanes. Shop in the malls. The trouble was that the only role they had for us was as consumers—not as citizens.

Citizenship is a lifetime job.

I am determined to be a first class citizen.

Responsible citizenship comes from direct participation in the conduct of the government, and imposes equal responsibility upon every citizen. If we could quicken and increase appreciation of this responsibility, and every citizen were made to feel its weight and importance, it would go far toward improving our political and national life.

Within each country’s borders, different view exist of the obligations of individual citizens to one another, of provinces and cities to their neighbors, of the large and the small entities to the polity—corporations, churches, and other institutions—to society as a whole.

We have become too much a society of consumers rather than a society of citizens.

The work of being a citizen is hard and annoying, but it can pay off.

Our responsibility as citizens is to keep doing our part.

I am often asked what can people do to become a good global citizen? I reply that it begins in your own community.

As young Americans, you have an important responsibility, which is to become good citizens.

When approached right, citizens never fail to shoulder their responsibilities.

I always say there's no ticket of admission for active citizenship. Anybody can get through that gate, and anybody can ask that basic question that gets the ball rolling.

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.

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.

Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual.

I think Americans have become a - much more a nation of consumers than citizens.

You are a citizen, and citizenship carries responsibilities.

The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.

The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all.

I realized that public affairs were also my affairs.

As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things.

People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.