Citizen Education Quotes

If we can't think for ourselves, if we're unwilling to question authority, then we're just putty in the hands of those in power. But if the citizens are educated and form their own opinions, then those in power work for us. In every country, we should be teaching our children the scientific method and the reasons for a Bill of Rights. With it comes a certain decency, humility and community spirit. In the demon-haunted world that we inhabit by virtue of being human, this may be all that stands between us and the enveloping darkness.

They [Mc Donalds] take people and give them a first job, which enables them to get a second job. They do a very good job of educating troubled young people to be good citizens and they're probably more successful than charter schools.

To instruct the mass of our citizens in these, their rights, interests and duties, as men and citizens...this brings us to the point at which are to commence the higher branches of education . . . . To develop the reasoning faculties of our youth, enlarge their minds, cultivate their morals, and instill into them the precepts of virtue and order.

We cannot sustain growth without trained manpower; not our democratic system of government, for freedom is fragile if citizens are ignorant.

What is news? It's hard to quantify. Certainly news has changed completely, and the morning shows are not really designed to bring you the news, except to tell you what happened overnight, and the rest of it is a kind of magazine mentality - a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It's harder to be an educated and informed citizen.

Unfortunately when we get to the “debates” as we all know these are never debates. There are questions where there is never a follow up, where you ask a question and I the candidate give an answer that has nothing to do with your question, and then we go on and somebody else asks the other person and back and forth. It is not just the fault of the candidates. We tend to have to have a simple short answer to complex problems for the sound byte requirements of modern journalism and perhaps the education levels of the average citizen. Complex problems can’t be reduced to that.

If you feel your rights are being abused by the authorities, and you don't say something, sometimes the cops don't know how far to take it. They have a hard job, but at the same time, I think it's just about educating yourself.

It can sound trite if you just say citizens need to be educated for democracy to work, but for him it wasn't trite. It was really this strenuous challenge to citizens to use their moments of leisure, which he defined as time away from work, to collect the facts that were necessary for full democratic participation.

States with better-educated citizens also see economic benefits. These states have better luck recruiting and retaining quality employers, and they enjoy lower overall rates of unemployment, poverty, and welfare dependency.

If you can't educate your citizens and you can't keep them healthy, you can't begin to be a society.

The root of democracy is in mass education. This foundation becomes stronger, when the citizens of tomorrow, our children are also educated about the electoral process.

Democracy - or any improvement on it - will rest on the layman's right to criticize. His criticism will be often - very often - damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate.

The success of a democracy depends on the enlightenment of its people. The people should know what's going on, and public officials should keep the people informed.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

He's [Louis Brandais] so suspicious of bigness in government as well as business that he mistrusts even really top-down reforms at the state level. The most inspiring part of his legacy to me is his belief in the imperative and duty of self-education on behalf of citizens.

It should be clear by now that a nation can be no stronger abroad than she is at home. Only an America which practices what it preaches about equal rights and social justice will be respected by those whose choice affects our future. Only an America which has fully educated its citizens is fully capable of tackling the complex problems and perceiving the hidden dangers of the world in which we live. And only an America which is growing and prospering economically can sustain the worldwide defenses of freedom, while demonstrating to all concerned the opportunities of our system and society.

The practice of our democracy depends on a sense of, and knowledge of, history in the same way that playing in the World Series requires a bat and a ball.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

A popular society must provide a school for citizens where through the best, most accessible and direct means they may be educated in the pure doctrine of Patriotism.

Journalists should denounce government by public opinion polls.

The government should train and direct the people in their acquisition of political knowledge and ability, thereby enabling them to exercise the powers of election, recall, initiative, and referendum.

No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated. Any nation that is progressive is led by people who have had the privilege of studying.

When people fought for a democratic life, they were insisting that the common man had the capacity to engage in deliberation about how the community ought to run its life, not that you could let him squeak for what he wanted. And that ideal was that you could educate the common man to develop a certain amount of wisdom and that he could marshal the objectivity to deliberate and decide about what the public would require without always thinking that the political action was an opportunity to further his private interests…

We lack an educated, resilient citizenry capable of navigating the increasing complexities of daily life.

The education that we have so far succeeded in giving to the bulk of our citizens has produced a generation of mental slatterns.