Citizen Activism Quotes

Political leaders will never take risks unless the people push them to take risks.

My citizen activism is a direct outgrowth of a classical and fiscally conservative training in economics at Harvard. It is a perspective rooted in one of the most important concepts in economics - the need for government intervention in the presence of a market failure.

Change doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington

The right of the people to peacefully assemble and petition their government for a redress of grievances is now worth a pitcher of warm spit. That's because TV will not come and treat it respectfully. Television is really something.

The global threat of 'Big Brother' can actually be conquered purely by technology.

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.

Freedom and liberty lose out by default because good people are not vigilant.

In a democracy, when you get 20 million people in the street, you resign.

Congress becomes the public voice of opposition.

A movement election is a different type of election. It's an election where the people start moving into a direction because they think the country is failing or going down the tubes or the establishment has failed them.

It is every American's right to question any big event, especially when it's seized on to take the basic liberties of Americans.

The primary thing I should do, apart from being a good husband, brother, son, and friend, is to be a citizen activist. But I'm afraid it takes away from the writing. Not that anything depends on whether I put an essay in 'The Nation' or not. But you want to participate.

I was fascinated by what happens when government institutions fail and citizens take the law into their own hands.

Politicians are there to try to deal with stuff, but sometimes it's both fortunate and unfortunate that people like us have more... not involvement, but more power in the stuff that we say.

Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.

Would I get into politics? I'll just say what I tell people when they ask me this: Pray that everyday citizens like me aren't pushed to that corner.

The most important political office is that of the private citizen.

The fact that people gather with placards is abnormal. Other countries would not allow that. Our democracy is in many cases excessive.

I call it small government, grass-roots activism: The Tea Party activists are a part of it, FreedomWorks is part of it. FreedomWorks is the longest-standing, most active organization within this movement.

Where progress has been made, wherever any kind of injustice has been overturned, it’s been because people acted as citizens, and not as politicians. They didn’t just moan. They worked, they acted, they organized, they rioted if necessary to bring their situation to the attention of people in power. And that’s what we have to do today.

A government is invigorated when each of us is willing to participate in shaping the future of this nation

After I returned from Oxford, I spent 5-6 years in a village in Madhya Pradesh - 25 km. outside Bhopal - along with a group of people working with the communities. But, over time, we realised that there were just too many constraints, and for ordinary citizens to be the change agent was not that easy.

Washington was taken by surprise by the Egyptian revolution because policy experts focused too much on Mubarak and his government, and too little on the 'voice of the people.'

Let's cause some senators distress.

Dissent is what rescues democracy from a quiet death behind closed doors.