Vikram Seth Quotes

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

I always preach that you have to be active as a citizen no matter what, and some people just voting as an excuse not to do anything.

Read the editorial page of your local paper. It introduces you to opinion and can be terrifically provocative and perhaps a great motivating force for you to get involved in your community, regardless of your political ideology.

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

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.

Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it.

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

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

As a citizen, you need to know how to be a part of it, how to express yourself - and not just by voting.

I expect we will become more demanding as citizens.

As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.

I just consider it a part of good citizenship.

Being a citizen in a democracy involves more than just voting. It means being involved for the common whole.

For America to work, Americans have to participate. If they don’t pay attention, they’re going to get screwed.

Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen.

We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.

Unless we citizens speak out, unless we are vigilant, democracy cannot fully function.

Music must awaken people to do their duty as citizens and act.

Be an active participant in your community and country. Every small gesture makes up the big gestures. Resist, rinse, repeat.

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.

We need a new kind of citizenship, so that we can see citizens as themselves earning the rank of patriot because of their involvement in their community affairs....We as a society need to be encouraging people to focus not just on individual wants but on serving the larger community.

As for being a voice in politics, I feel whether you are famous or not, busy or not, it's incumbent upon every citizen to participate in this government in any way we can.

Politics should be the part-time profession of every citizen.

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

And you don't want to always write about politics just for the sake of writing about politics.