Citizen Influence Quotes

People who don't vote have no line of credit with people who are elected and thus pose no threat to those who act against our interests.

...nations have no command over their governments, & in fact no influence over them, except of a fleeting & rather ineffectual sort.

Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or ill it teaches the whole people by its example.

It's heartening when people hear for the first time that their vote really matters.

I tell people, 'If you want to send a message to the White House, call my house.'

Under a Presidential government, a nation has, except at the electing moment, no influence; it has not the ballot-box before it; its virtue is gone, and it must wait till its instant of despotism again returns.

Of course, technology is not an exogenous force over which humans have no control. We are not constrained by a binary choice between acceptance and rejection. Rather, the decisions we make every day as citizens, consumers, and investors guide technological progress.

A small group of motivated citizens can potentially have as much influence as a lobby group spending millions of dollars.

I believe if a private citizen is able to affect public opinion in a constructive way he doesn't have to be an elected public servant to perform a public service.

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

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

The point is, is that when you elect a politician, it has nothing to do with their personality. Politicians perform a function, a role in government. And the role of city government is not one that serves the people, unless the people make them do what the people want.

If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you're gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders.

The most powerful force possessed by the individual citizen is her own government. ... Government is the only organized mechanism that makes possible that level of shared disinterest known as the public good.

During their tenure, the elected representatives of the people walk with the gods. And it is only when an election is announced that they realise it is the people in their constituencies, with whom they have not really bothered to keep in touch, who will decide their fate.

In modern states, the citizen is politically impotent. A citizen, it is true, may complain, make suggestions, or cause disruptions, but in the ancient world these were privileges that belonged to any slave.

Without looking, then, to those extraordinary social influences which are now acting in precisely this direction, but only at whatis inevitably doing around us, I think we must regard the land as a commanding and increasing power on the citizen, the sanative and Americanizing influence, which promises to disclose new virtues for ages to come.

It's a sad day in America when foreign governments with deep pockets have more influence in our own country than our great citizens.