Joseph Gordon-Levitt Quotes

You have citizens who don't understand how government works and they're kind of soured on it. All they do is criticize. They have no idea that they can make things happen.

When the three branches of government have failed to represent the citizenry and the mass of the media has failed to represent the citizenry, then the citizenry better represent the citizenry.

If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave.

It is important to show up. Showing up at marches and rallies and town halls and protests. I remember I was really quite sad from Election Night last year until Jan. 20. And then I remember waking up Jan. 21 and seeing these amazing Women's Marches across America, and I thought to myself, That's the country that I know. And that's a larger populist movement that I'm seeing than Donald Trump's relatively small populist movement. And that gave me a lot of hope and energy, and from that day forward, I've taken a view that we'll flip the House next year.

Why I've never been that fond of politics and only got into it recently kicking and screaming, because I don't think politicians are going to reverse the trajectory of this country. I think it's going to depend on the American people understanding what is fair and what makes their lives better.

Though government has an important role to play in meeting the many challenges that remain before us, we are coming to understand that no organization, including government, will fully succeed without the active participation of each of us. Volunteers are vital to enabling this country to live up to the true promise of its heritage

'Unlikely Brothers' talks about the importance of citizen action and shows why and how we can make a difference.

Our future cannot depend on the government alone. The ultimate solutions lie in the attitudes and the actions of the American people.

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

As a girl who was raised on the idea that we should give back to our community as much as possible, I believe that we have more power than we think when it comes to making change.

I liked the give-and-take of a policy discussion in the community, with citizens. I didn't know that even took place, frankly, but I never dreamed it would be an enjoyable thing to do.

Citizen participation: a device whereby public officials induce nonpublic individuals to act in a way the officials desire.

I want Americans to realize that we are the owners of this country, and that one person can make a difference.

Scepticism and cynicism about politics is so great that one of the best counters to it is what you can do at a local level.

This is essential that we have a resurgence in democratic participation. And I don't mean big-D Democrat, I mean small-D democrat. I mean getting involved in your neighborhood, your community. This is no time to say, "I'm not into politics." This is a time to go headlong into the welfare of this nation.

There are enough people who are starting to be actively involved that we can turn things around. And we need to encourage others to become involved.

Try not to be too angry or disappointed with your fellow Americans. Most of them don't care about politics as much as the majority of my readers, and the education they have received about it from the government's public school system is nothing more than a septic tank full of warmed-over self-serving statist lies and leftist propaganda.

What is this much repeated phrase 'active citizen' supposed to mean? The active citizens are the ones who took the Bastille.

The era of big government is over, but the era of big challenge is not. We need an era of big citizenship. There are many important people at this summit, but the most important title is 'citizen.' This is our republic. Let us keep it!

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.

I think part of our problem right now in the country is that people feel that nobody listens to them. And that means that they just don't trust anybody in government, anybody in politics, and anybody in the economy.

The individual citizen has very little possibility of having any influence - of making his opinion felt in the decision-making.

There's a great book by my friend Nate Garvis called Naked Civics that was very important in my development as someone with a social conscious and that has become, I guess, something of an activist.

One of the things that I do think government counts on is that people are busy. And it's very difficult to mobilize a busy and relatively affluent country, unless it's over really crucial- you know, foundational issues.

The really critical thing isn't who's sitting in he White House, but who is sitting in the streets, in the cafeterias, in the halls of government, in the factories. Who is protesting, who is occupying offices and demonstrating ? - those are the things that determine what happens.