Citizenship In A Republic Quotes

freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that "Oh, I don't get involved in politics," as if that makes you somehow 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.

THE phrase Daring Greatly is from Theodore Roosevelt’s speech “Citizenship in a Republic.” The speech, sometimes referred to as “The Man in the Arena,” was delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. This is the passage that made the speech famous: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.…

When the post-bailout debate was still at its highest pitch, Jamie Dimon sent Hank Paulson a note with a quote from a speech that President Theodore Roosevelt delivered at the Sorbonne in April 1910 entitled “Citizenship in a Republic.” It reads: It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Achievement was worthy of praise and honor, but excessive achievement was pernicious and a threat to the state. However great a citizen might become, however great he might wish to become, the truest greatness of all still belonged to the Roman Republic itself

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt "Citizenship in a Republic," Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

The final victory over Carthage in the Punic Wars led to rising economic inequality, dislocation of traditional ways of life, increasing political polarization, the breakdown of unspoken rules of political conduct, the privatization of the military, rampant corruption, endemic social and ethnic prejudice, battles over access to citizenship and voting rights, ongoing military quagmires, the introduction of violence as a political tool, and a set of elites so obsessed with their own privileges that they refused to reform the system in time to save it.

One need not become a candidate (though that’s certainly an option worth considering) or a political addict hooked on every twist and every turn and every tweet. But the paying of attention, the expressing of opinion, and the casting of ballots are foundational to living up to the obligations of citizenship in a republic.

They next proceed to make a law which fixes a sum of money as the qualification of citizenship; the sum is higher in one place and lower in another, as the oligarchy is more or less exclusive; and they allow no one whose property falls below the amount fixed to have any share in the government. These changes in the constitution they effect by force of arms, if intimidation has not already done their work.

Cicero deplored the practice, saying, “It may not be right… for one who is not a citizen to exercise the rights and privileges of citizenship,” but actually expelling non-Romans was “contrary to the laws of humanity.

Citizenship, after all, is not an entitlement; it requires work. Yet too many citizens of republics, ancient and modern, come to believe that they deserve rights without assuming responsibilities—and they don’t worry how or why or from whom they inherited their privileges.1

Periodic expulsions of foreigners became a recurring feature of the later Republic, and Cicero deplored the practice, saying, “It may not be right… for one who is not a citizen to exercise the rights and privileges of citizenship,” but actually expelling non-Romans was “contrary to the laws of humanity.

Periodic expulsions of foreigners became a recurring feature of the later Republic, and Cicero deplored the practice, saying, “It may not be right… for one who is not a citizen to exercise the rights and privileges of citizenship,” but actually expelling non-Romans was “contrary to the laws of humanity.”9

America’s original sin was not the exclusion of people born outside the nation’s borders from citizenship. It was the exclusion of many people who had lived here even before the start of the Republic—in particular, Native Americans and African Americans. For most of its existence, America found it relatively easy to assimilate foreigners, although there were periods of sharp and even violent tension.

In the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation.

I confess that during the citizenship application process the founding principles of this country have grown on me. I have come to believe in the ideal that “We the People” can come together “to form a more perfect Union”. The United States represent the most awesome social experiment in the world—a melting pot of cultures, united behind the idea of living free in a democratic Republic.

But that ideal, put forward in the Declaration of Independence and pursued ever since in a variety of ways by Americans of all races, religions, and political persuasions, is most accessible when we allow the mediating layers of our culture and society to flourish. It is not a vision of radical individualism or of consolidated statism. It is a vision of the free society rooted in an understanding of liberty that depends upon our institutions of moral formation and on the kind of person they produce—the citizen fit for virtuous freedom. It is an ideal rooted in natural rights but put into practice by free men and women who are not merely natural but also social achievements. American citizenship is not simply the application of that shared ideal, of course.

Americans were encouraged to understand their circumstances and their obligations in terms of their citizenship in a great nation managed by large, powerful institutions that would help them through the risks and instabilities of

Arguably the most substantive domestic issue facing the republic is the fate of Social Security, with privatization the most frequently mentioned option. For the first time in history, a familiarity with the behavior of the financial markets has become a prerequisite for competent citizenship, apart from its obvious pecuniary value. Using

In a republic, to be successful we must learn to combine intensity of conviction with a broad tolerance of difference of conviction. Wide differences of opinion in matters of religious, political, and social belief must exist if conscience and intellect alike are not be stunted, if there is to be room for healthy growth.

Of one man in especial, beyond any one else, the citizens of a republic should beware, and that is of the man who appeals to them to support him on the ground that he is hostile to other citizens of the republic, that he will secure for those who elect him, in one shape or another, profit at the expense of other citizens of the republic… It makes no difference whether he appeals to class hatred or class interest, to religious or antireligious prejudice. The man who makes such an appeal should always be presumed to make it for the sake of furthering his own interest. The very last thing an intelligent and self-respecting member of a democratic community should do is to reward any public man because that public man says that he will get the private citizen something to which this private citizen is not entitled, or will gratify some emotion or animosity which this private citizen ought not to possess… If a public man tries to get your vote by saying that he will do something wrong in your interest, you can be absolutely certain that if ever it becomes worth his while he will do something wrong against your interest.

In the short term, as liberal economies floundered in the early 1930s, fascist economies could look more capable than democracies of performing the harsh task of reconciling populations to diminished personal consumption in order to permit a higher rate of savings and investment, particularly in the military. But we know now that they never achieved the growth rates of postwar Europe, or even of pre-1914 Europe, or even the total mobilization for war achieved voluntarily and belatedly by some of the democracies. This makes it difficult to accept the definition of fascism as a “developmental dictatorship” appropriate for latecomer industrial nations. Fascists did not wish to develop the economy but to prepare for war, even though they needed accelerated arms production for that. Fascists had to do something about the welfare state. In Germany, the welfare experiments of the Weimar Republic had proved too expensive after the Depression struck in 1929. The Nazis trimmed them and perverted them by racial forms of exclusion. But neither fascist regime tried to dismantle the welfare state (as mere reactionaries might have done). Fascism was revolutionary in its radically new conceptions of citizenship, of the way individuals participated in the life of the community. It was counterrevolutionary, however, with respect to such traditional projects of the Left as individual liberties, human rights, due process, and international peace. In sum, the fascist exercise of power involved a coalition composed of the same elements in Mussolini’s Italy as in Nazi Germany. It was the relative weight among leader, party, and traditional institutions that distinguished one case from the other. In Italy, the traditional state wound up with supremacy over the party, largely because Mussolini feared his own most militant followers, the local ras and their squadristi. In Nazi Germany, the party came to dominate the state and civil society, especially after war began. Fascist regimes functioned like an epoxy: an amalgam of two very different agents, fascist dynamism and conservative order, bonded by shared enmity toward liberalism and the Left, and a shared willingness to stop at nothing to destroy their common enemies.

There is no freedom without sacrifice. Same as there is no peace without someone taking the lead.

There can be no liberal politics without a sense of we—of what we are as citizens and what we owe each other. If liberals hope ever to recapture America’s imagination and become a dominant force across the country, it will not be enough to beat the Republicans at flattering the vanity of the mythical Joe Sixpack. They must offer a vision of our common destiny based on one thing that all Americans, of every background, actually share. And that is citizenship. We must relearn how to speak to citizens as citizens and to frame our appeals—including ones to benefit particular groups—in terms of principles that everyone can affirm. Ours must become a civic liberalism.* This does not mean a return to the New Deal. Future liberals cannot be like the liberals of yore; too much has changed. But it will require that the spell of identity politics that has held two generations in its thrall be broken so that we can focus on what we share as citizens. I hope to convince my fellow liberals that their current way of looking at the country, speaking to it, teaching the young, and engaging in practical politics has been misguided and counterproductive. Their abdication must end and a new approach must be embraced.   It is a bittersweet truth that there has never been a better opportunity in half a century for liberals to start winning the country back. Republicans since Trump’s election are in disarray and intellectually bankrupt. Most Americans now recognize that Reagan’s “shining city upon a hill” has turned into rust belt towns with long-shuttered shops, abandoned factories invaded by local grasses, cities where the water is undrinkable and guns are everywhere, and homes across the country where families are scraping by with part-time minimum-wage jobs and no health insurance. It is an America where Democrats, independents, and many Republican voters feel themselves abandoned by their country. They want America to be America again. But there is no again in politics, just the future. And there is no reason why the American future should not be a liberal one. Our message can and should be simple: we are a republic, not a campsite. Citizens are not roadkill. They are not collateral damage. They are not the tail of the distribution. A citizen, simply by virtue of being a citizen, is one of us. We have stood together to defend the country against foreign adversaries in the past. Now we must stand together at home to make sure that none of us faces the risk of being left behind. We’re all Americans and we owe that to each other. That’s what liberalism means.

Lizabeth Cohen defines the postwar equation of citizenship and consumerism as the emergence of a "consumer's republic" in which consumerism, rather than social policy, is seen as the means through which to achieve social ideals. In the contemporary context, government authorities speak to Americans in the language of consumerism more than the language of citizenship, inciting us everyday to do our part for the national economy by spending our money, buying cars and houses, and accumulating debt on credit card. Indeed, Americans are almost always spoken to as citizen-consumers.

The intimate connection between war and citizenship lies at the heart of the modern state,” Fouad ‘Ajami wrote of the 1967 defeat.

For the first time in their memory, certainly since the earliest beginnings of the Civil War, Americans facing the shared tragedy of Garfield’s ordeal felt a deep and surprising connection to one another. Divided by vast stretches of dangerous wilderness and stark differences in race, religion, and culture, there had been little beyond severely strained notions of common citizenship to unite them. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln sixteen years earlier had only deepened that divide. But the attempt on Garfield’s life aroused feelings of patriotism that many Americans had long since forgotten, or never knew they had.

It’s your responsibility, as a citizen, to question your state and keep them in check.

The phrase Daring Greatly is from Theodore Roosevelt's speech "Citizenship in a Republic." The speech, sometimes referred to as "The Man in the Arena," was delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, on April 23, 1910. This is the passage that made the speech famous: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly..." The first time I read this quote, I thought, This is vulnerability. Everything I've learned from over a decade of research on vulnerability has taught me this exact lesson. Vulnerability is not knowing victory or defeat, it's understanding the necessity of both; it's engaging. It's being all in.

Schools that taught African Americans struggled to gain traction in the Early Republic because education was considered a stepping stone to citizenship.

made Harvath want to suck-start his Glock. Lots of people were well-meaning, but they were lazy. They didn’t exert the basic duties of good citizenship. They believed anything and everything that flashed across their phone or computer screen. They believed that if they were in a group, or a feed, of like-minded people, all the information being pushed at them was true. They didn’t realize that the information spaces where you felt safest were where America’s enemies loved to seed their propaganda and disinformation. Harvath loved his fellow countrymen and women but loathed the ones who couldn’t be bothered to fact-check what they were reading and hearing. Being a responsible steward of the American republic meant doing the hard work of being truthfully informed.

1840, the Republic of Texas began to address the liberal racial policies it had inherited from Mexico. The political status of afromexicanos and emancipated slaves was the most critical issue at hand. For most Anglo-Americans, afromexicanos were a nuisance, since they had the freedom to move freely among them and act as equals.52 Plus, free persons of African descent posed a political threat to Texas’s new racial order because they were

Over May 5–7, 1824, when the states and territories of the republic were constituted, the delegates voted to merge Texas and Coahuila into one state.18 The Texas delegation, including Stephen Austin, vigorously opposed the union because Coahuila was an older, extensively populated region and would be apportioned more representatives than Texas.19 At that time Texas had 3,334 inhabitants, and Coahuila, 42,937.20 It was likely that slavery would be abolished in Texas because Congress authorized each state to draft its constitution and establish state laws, including those regarding slavery.

The Constitution of the Republic of Texas (1836) extended citizenship to all persons residing in Texas on the day of the declaration of independence as long as they were not Black or Indian.49 Mexicans who were white and mestizo became citizens of Texas. With respect to land, officials adopted some of Mexico’s property laws, but placed racial restrictions on those who would be able to recertify their grants. Under Mexican law, occupational land rights were recognized, and a person did not have to hold a deed to the land he lived on. Under the laws of the new republic, however, Indians and Blacks were prohibited from validating their Spanish and Mexican land grants, regardless of whether they held a deed. They also became ineligible to apply for new land grants.

Responsible citizenship means rewarding leaders who demonstrate integrity and appeal to our better angels rather than our worst impulses, and caring enough about truth to reject propaganda and lies from politicians, pundits, and presidents who spew them.

Again, the classical traditions of the Roman Republic followed Hellenic precedent. Small agrarian Italian soldiers, the famed legionaries of Rome, became the foundation of a republic to ensure political rights predicated on their economic viability and martial prowess—a paradigm found nowhere else in the Mediterranean. The Roman civis (cf. “civil,” “civic,” “civilization,” etc.), or citizen, was the beneficiary of rights codified in an extensive body of law. Legal protection for the civis against arbitrary arrest, confiscation, or taxation ensured the value of citizenship. Indeed, later, throughout the Roman-controlled Mediterranean, echoed the republican-era boast civis Romanus sum—“I am a Roman citizen.

Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it. What keeps a republic on its legs is good citizenship. —MARK TWAIN, 1906

It was when he spoke about the legacy of the Civil War, however, that Garfield was most passionate. With victory, he told the crowd standing before him, had come extraordinary opportunity. “The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution,” he said. “It has liberated the master as well as the slave from a relation which wronged and enfeebled both.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. —Excerpt from “Citizenship in a Republic” Theodore Roosevelt, 1910

One of the main legislative tasks of the Republic of Texas had been to determine whether Spanish and Mexican marriage laws were valid under the new political regime. The resulting legislation would affect the inheritance rights and economic livelihoods of most families in Texas. The Texas Congress had adopted English common law regarding marriage practices. If Congress nullified the former governments’ marriage laws, all marriages that took place before Texas independence would be declared null and void, including those of Anglo-Americans. Families formed under the previous governments’ laws and conventions would be deemed illegitimate, and under English common law, any children from such families would be unable to inherit property from a deceased parent, including land grants issued by empresarios under Mexican law.

If left unattended by nonvigilant citizens, the freedoms of democracy can be lost to an all-powerful state, and citizens can become transformed into subjects of the government they failed to keep in check.

Citizenship in a Republic” (Ciudadano de una república) que el expresidente Theodore Roosevelt pronunciara en la Sorbona en 1910: No es el crítico el que importa; el que señala cómo tropieza el fuerte o qué habría podido hacer mejor el resuelto. El mérito es de quien está en el ruedo, cubierta la cara de polvo, sudor y sangre; de quien lucha con valentía; de quien falla y se equivoca una y otra vez, porque no hay esfuerzo sin tacha ni error; de quien asume la responsabilidad de actuar; de quien conoce grandes entusiasmos y devociones; de quien se entrega a una buena causa; de quien al final conoce el triunfo de su empeño y que si, en el peor de los casos, fracasa, lo hace al menos habi

For the first phase of American history, “hope was chiefly expressed through a Christian story that gave meaning to suffering and pleasure alike and promised deliverance from death.” But then, under the influence of Enlightenment rationality, belief in God and the supernatural began to weaken among cultural elites. Instead of finding ultimate hope in the kingdom of God, Americans began to believe in the sacred calling of being the “greatest nation on earth,” one that would show the rest of the world the way to a better future for the human race. It essentially substituted a “deified nation” for God. There was no more vivid example of nationhood and citizenship than “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”: “As [Jesus] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free.

Of the some 400 surveyed, nearly 300 had become Saudi citizens or permanent residents. The immigration to Saudi Arabia was largely accomplished through the assistance of Ma Bufang, a Qinghai Muslim who served as the Republic of China’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 1957 until 1961 and who would himself ultimately obtain Saudi citizenship.76 The welcome they received and the commercial success they achieved there remained well known because many of those who fled had traveled through India (often specifically Kashmir).

Citizenship in a Republic,” delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910, TR offered a brilliant vision of the virtues of action: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight.

In The Fractured Republic, Yuval Levin makes this point with a Tocquevillian accent: in many ways the ideal of a pluralistic liberal society has lived off the borrowed (formative) capital of “illiberal” (mostly religious) communities—including the family—as incubators for the dispositions of good citizenship. But insofar as both liberalism and capitalism54 tend to devour and erode just these institutions and communities, they end up being a parasite that, starved by its own hunger, consumes the host and thus engenders its own demise. This raises serious questions about the viability of pluralism from the left, which has of late exhibited neither patience nor tolerance nor humility.