Valerie Jarrett Quotes

It's really important to be active in your community, whatever community that is... find allies and find people who you relate to and who make you stronger as a group.

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

I do feel, in a sense, the rules of engagement for citizenship has changed, and we must encourage other people to speak up and to take action.

We are in a world where people are understanding that athletes and entertainers are citizens too. Some of us want to leverage our platform for good, and I want to be someone who is thoughtful and real about trying to influence people in a way that will lead to healthier communities and a better nation.

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

I want my kids to grow up to be a useful citizen.

Will you be a spectator or a citizen? To make a difference in this world, you must be involved.

Our culture is at a critical cusp - a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.

Families are incubators for citizen activists.

I realized that public affairs were also my affairs.

I often tell people I don't care whether they join the NAACP or some other group, but you better join something.

Wherever the citizen becomes indifferent to his fellows, so will the husband be to his wife, and the father of a family toward the members of his household.

The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.

In order for critical pedagogy, dialogue, and thought to have real effects, they must advocate the message that all citizens, old and young, are equally entitled, if not equally empowered, to shape the society in which they live.

Everybody is supposed to be a part of their own community.

Governments cannot make marriages or turn feckless individuals into responsible citizens. That needs another kind of change agent.

I'm fighting hard to make the world a better place, and you can, too. Get involved with your community, be a leader, set an example, be passionate, be your best.

I feel that there has been progress made since I was a boy on matters of race, but we have a long way to go.

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

We need to take responsibility and educate people. That's why black folks don't like me. I always say it's our responsibility to make safe neighborhoods. It's our job to get them cleaned up.

I certainly think it's very important that writers as citizens - not necessarily as writers, but just as ordinary citizens - should talk about things that matter to them.

I feel a real responsibility to my community and so right now there has been this bizarre myth in our community how our vote doesn't count. I'm trying to get out there and re-educate on how the government works and break that myth and talk about the importance of being involved.

My passion is to create a better society for our future citizens.

Empowerment is not about doing the same thing the same way in the same environment. It's about building the man and the woman and doing so with a view to creating better citizens and, by extension, better patriots in this society of ours.

If citizenship means anything, it means sharing the pleasures and pains of American life.