Stephen Colbert Quotes

The whole idea of a democracy is that we ourselves, the people, are supposed to make a path of our politics, and it is we who with our feet and our vote and our labors and our vigilance are supposed to shape our country.

We're not going to fix government until we fix citizenship.

When people get this consciousness of the way things are supposed to be in America - that the locus of agency is in them, that they are supposed to be the ones setting the agenda - if people believe this, they get very energized. Yeah, it's annoying to have this extra burden of saving the country.

We must renew democracy itself. We have to fight cynicism and inertia and restore faith in the advancement of our country.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

To find ways of practicing democracy, not ways of orating about it, is our great problem.

Therefore, until the day I die, I am going to do what I can, regardless of the cost to me, to try to stop this awful corruption that is destroying our beloved democracy.

Political involvement is more than a game.

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.

When I grow up I’m going to change the government.

I think we need to raise our voices, and we need to demonstrate to the people we represent, as well as the American people, that their leaders have a responsibility to take action.

We need to restore our democracy to a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

I think democracy is not a destination. I don't think socialism is a railway station and if we catch the right train with the right driver, we'll get there. I think it's a way of thinking about things and every generation has to do it again.

I think it's very important for everyone in America to realize right now the state of our country, not just on this issue but on a lot of issues, that it is time to get active again. People have just sat back and just sort of said, oh, let somebody else do it for a long time, and we're seeing what's happening to the country, even freedom of speech. It's not going well. So I think this is a real opportunity for people to see, yes, if you do get out and you do get active, there are other people there. You just have to seek them out.

The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.

I think the right way to do this is just to step up and do it, so I actually think we'll see more of that over the next coming weeks, because I think they'll say, "We'd like to be good for business and quiet on politics, but this is too urgent, it is too much of a key crisis in who we are going to become as Americans. We can risk too much, and so we have to step forward." And I think you will see more and more people stepping forward, like Howard Schultz, Steve Case and other folks, in order to try to make a difference in this [Donald Trump] election.

Silence is not an effective political strategy, and what we do if we silence the public interest, which is so hard to hear anyway, is that we silence ourselves and then we do not have a democracy.

In countries where democracy is either non-existent or in development, on the other hand, citizens crave those freedoms. Maybe that is one lesson Western citizens can learn from those countries: treasure what you have. Use your rights and freedoms to effect the change you want.

If people are taking my book seriously and organizing, getting into office, caring about the constitution, and not waiting for someone else to lead them, I think, God bless them. All of us should be doing that. The left should be doing that.

Good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

I think one of the core ideas in America has always been conversation and being able to question our systems of government, and being able to dictate our own communities and how we want this country to work. And I feel like we're losing part of that because of the way that even our current political campaign is centered more around celebrity than anything else, and so we're kind of losing conversation. We're still having conversations, but they seem to be more about like Donald Trump's hair and like memes of his face more than anything else.

You do not keep American democracy in suspense. Because, look, too many people have marched and protested and fought and died for this democracy.

The life of a republic lies certainly in the energy, virtue, and intelligence of its citizens.

There are people working their butts off trying to save our republic and save democracy from the likes of powerful people in the Democrat Party who want to take this country and turn it into a personal little playground for their own private gain.