Georges Bernanos Quotes

Free citizens have two distinct sets of civil liberties. As the makers of the laws, they have duties and responsibilities which require an absolute freedom. As the subjects of the laws, they have possessions and rights, to which belongs a relative freedom.

People have increasingly come to regard the government as a source of rights rather than as a defender of pre-existing individual rights.

But we must create in each person a sense of responsibility in order that each one of us can have the right to enjoy all his rights.

Democracy means not merely, I had almost said not so much, the rights of the whole people, as the duties of the whole people.

if any government does not acknowledge the rights of the human person or violates them, it not only fails in its duty, but its orders completely lack juridical force

Rights! There are no rights whatever without corresponding duties.

Freedom requires civil responsibility.

No one can be a good citizen unless he fulfills those domestic duties which are incumbent on his social station and unless he honors all his obligations to society.

Freedom & Duty always go hand in hand and if the free do not accept the duty of social responsibility, they will not long remain free.

We've placed a lot of emphasis in this country on the idea of people's rights. That's how it should be, but it makes no sense to talk about rights without also talking about responsibilities.

Your ability as republican volunteers, to rise to this challenge will mean that the two governments and others cannot easily hide from their obligations and their responsibility to resolve these problems.

Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable.

We must create a state that responds to the citizens' needs, and we need citizens who feel committed to their state because that state serves the citizens.

The public good is in nothing more essentially interested, than in the protection of every individual’s private rights.

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

Since the state is a community of human beings it is as truly subject to the moral law as any private society.

Voting is the first duty of democracy.

We have a great nation to help govern. We who are citizens of this great republic are favored children, yet we are all the time complaining; but that is one of the inalienable privileges of an American to complain about his neighbor and government-always crying for a change. But, with all of its faults, this is the best government for man on the face of the earth

I am determined to be a first class citizen.

The New Englander is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.

We have depended on government for so much for so long that we as people have become less vigilant of our liberties.

Democracy requires both discipline and hard work. It is not easy for individuals to govern themselves.... It is one thing to gain freedom, but no one can give you the right to self-government. This you must earn for yourself by long discipline.

When each citizen submits himself to the authority of law he does not thereby decrease his independence or freedom, but rather increases it. By recognizing that he is a part of a larger body which is banded together for a common purpose, he becomes more than an individual, he rises to a new dignity of citizenship. Instead of finding himself restricted and confined by rendering obedience to public law, he finds himself protected and defended and in the exercise of increased and increasing rights.

I think citizenship should count for something... and it really counts for nothing.

Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on.