Maria Ressa Quotes

You can’t just say you have rights. You have to use them to prove that you have them.

I never knew I had so many rights.

I know that my voice and my vote matter and that I can help shape the outcome of events that I care deeply about.

I have a prominent platform and I want to use it to promote respect for human rights, democracy, and personal freedom. For me, this is bigger than basketball.

Our democracy is not something to be taken for granted. You have to fight for it. You have to commit yourself to working for it - for the long haul.

You need to remind people that you vote, you matter, and that they can't succeed without your help.

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

Anybody who asks for democracy to be introduced should respect the results of democracy.

So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.

Citizenship is no light trifle to be jeopardized at any moment Congress decides to do so under the name of its general or implied grants of power.

This is one of the finest expressions of U. S. democracy at work.

Politics is not a spectator sport. You can't just sit on the sidelines.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

We are not perfect. Democracy is a messy business … Democracy depends on people getting and keeping involved … In our democracy, the government is not them; it is us.

Getting involved in politics was a quest for freedom.

I want every American to stand up for his rights, even if he has to sit down for them.

Democracy is not something we have, it's something we do.

To speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it.

We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as people have become less vigilant of our liberties.

Somehow we must be able to show people that democracy is not about words, but action.

Political rights do not exist because they have been legally set down on a piece of paper, but only when they have become the ingrown habit of a people, and when any attempt to impair them will meet with the violent resistance of the populace.

The American Government will be what we all make of it.