Helen Prejean Quotes

Every generation will be challenged morally once in their life about its government, and they will have to say where they stand.

What are we going to do if citizens are disarmed, and the government doesn't obey its own laws?

Suppose that I see a hungry child in the street, and I am able to offer the child some food. Am I morally culpable if I refuse to do so? Am I morally culpable if I choose not to do what I easily can about the fact that 1000 children die every hour from easily preventable disease, according to UNICEF? Or the fact that the government of my own "free and open society" is engaged in monstrous crimes that can easily be mitigated or terminated? Is it even possible to debate these questions?

Government ... can't be trusted to control its own bureaucrats or collect taxes equitably or fill a pothole, much less decide which of its citizens to kill.

The fight for reform comes down to a simple goal: giving our citizens the confidence that government serves the people first and the people only.

Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right.

Allowing our government to kill citizens compromises the deepest moral values upon which this country was conceived: the inviolable dignity of human persons.

Liberal Democrats in government will not follow the last Labour government by sounding the retreat on the protection of civil liberties in the United Kingdom. It continues to be essential that our civil liberties are safeguarded, and that the state is not given the powers to snoop on its citizens at will.

Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it.

No one in government should ever think that the citizens they work for can't or won't scrutinize their actions.

Well, again, a gun sale database is just trying to get the Department of Justice to keep track of the guns that they're purchasing and supplying to drug dealers and murderers. I mean, wow. Come on, let's get the government under control before we start restricting the rights of - innocent citizens.

I could not become an American citizen. I would not like to become a citizen of a country that has capital punishment.

We, as citizens, are the true owners of government.

Without the ability to talk about government power, there's no way for citizens to make sure this power isn't being misused.

We are giving the citizens of Poland a sense that a reasonable and predictable government is ruling here.

When you have corporate influence on our government outweighing the influence of citizens, that's terrifying. This is something we have to make a big, big noise about.

Before my tenure, people didn't seem to think that citizens had a right to limit the size of their government.

Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your government is doing to you.

All governments abuse power. Every one of them. It's the duty of citizens to resist those abuses.

It is the obligation of every government to yield protection to their citizens as the consideration for their obedience

Ordinary citizens need access to government-held information in order to exercise their rights in just about every phase of their lives–whether to gain entry to education, apply for a job, gain access to a poverty alleviation scheme, build or buy a house, start a business or collect a pension. Without it, they are ready prey to the corrupt and the abusive. ..

It was a new kind of class war — the people as citizens versus the politicians and their clients in the public sector.

To establish republican government, it is necessary to effect a constitution in which the will of the nation shall have an organized control over the actions of its government, and its citizens a regular protection against its oppressions

If the Soviet Government orders me to act against my conscience, I do not obey …. Conscience is above the law. No law which is against the conscience can bind.

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error.