Top 1200 American Citizenship Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

There is no institution more vital to our Nation's survival than the American family. Here the seeds of personal character are planted, the roots of public virtue first nourished. Through love and instruction, discipline, guidance and example, we learn from our mothers and fathers the values that will shape our private lives and our public citizenship.

Mothers have always held such symbolic weight in determining a person's worth. Your mother tongue, your motherland, your mother's values - these things can qualify or disqualify you from attaining myriad American dreams: love, fluency, citizenship, legitimacy, acceptance, success, freedom.

It was a failure of citizenship of the American people that the Bush cabal was allowed to invade Iraq. Thus, every U.S. citizen who is not doing everything in their power to end this illegal and immoral occupation as quickly as possible is complicit with the war crimes being committed in Iraq on a daily basis.

Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education. Our requirements for world leadership, our hopes for economic growth, and the demands of citizenship itself in an era such as this all require the maximum development of every young American's capacity. The human mind is our fundamental resource.

I'm not a Communist. I'm an American. I'm a capitalist. I mean, I'm not a very good capitalist, myself. I'm not very good at it, but it's not that I'm not for capitalism. But people who believe in things like corporate citizenship, it's idiotic. I mean, it shows you're an idiot.

I think there's no problem getting through the House a pathway to legal status. A pathway to citizenship is going to be tougher, but I think it is potentially doable, if we can show the American people that the border is secure.

We're being overrun by people who live in poor and corrupt countries who come to the USA to get work. But we got to regain our sovereignty, we're going to control our border, and there will be border security tied to the pathway to citizenship. There will be an earned pathway to citizenship. It will be available to everybody who works hard, pays a fine, passes a background check.

We can't wait any longer for a path to full and equal citizenship. Now, this is where I differ with everybody on the Republican side. Make no mistake, today, not a single Republican candidate, announced or potential, is clearly and consistently supporting a path to citizenship. Not one. When they talk about legal status that is code for second-class status.

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is

There is no way that we know what is going on between the African American and the Asian American. We don't understand what an Indigenous American is. We don't understand what a Latino American is.

From a policy point of view, I don't think it's the right approach. I don't like the idea of having millions of people here for their entire life without being able to assimilate into America...From a political point of view, we've got 55 Democrats sent and a 72 percent support for a path to citizenship. It's just not practical to think we'll be able to pass any bill in the United States Senate without a path to citizenship.

There will never be a bill without a pathway to citizenship signed by the president...And in turn there will never be a pathway to citizenship without a new immigration system replacing the current one.

You can be a Polish American, or an Arab American, or a Greek American but you can't be English American. Why not?

I have dual citizenship with Italy.

As citizen-activists the world over merge, they can become an irresistible force to create peace and protect the planet. From here will come a new movement to abolish nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. From here will come the demand for sustainable communities, for new systems of energy, transportation and commerce. From here comes the future rushing in on us. How does one acquire the capacity for active citizenship? The opportunities exist every day...Active citizenship begins with an envisioning of the desired outcome and a conscious application of spiritual principles.

The gospel of grace nullifies our adulation of televangelists, charismatic superstars, and local church heroes. It obliterates the two-class citizenship theory operative in many American churches. For grace proclaims the awesome truth that all is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right, but by the sheer bounty of a gracious God.

I favor a form of cosmopolitanism that takes nations very seriously, particularly because of the role of national law in sustaining or, unfortunately, undermining human rights. Some cosmopolitans take the metaphor of global citizenship - the etymology of the word, after all, just comes from a Greek phrase meaning citizen of the world - to rule out taking national citizenship seriously. I think that's a big mistake. Why can't I be loyal to America and to humanity? After all, I can be loyal to America and to New York city!

An auctioneer is such a uniquely American thing. I keep thinking in my head, perhaps it's not as American as I think, but it feels so Southern. It feels so American. Like, hundreds of years of American tradition is involved in it.

Every time I make American film I just trust American directors and American writers.

I shall accord to myself the honor of inscribing myself as an applicant for the American citizenship which according to law I can obtain only after five years residence in this country. And I shall yield to no one of my future countrymen in patriotism. I consider America now my real home.

I've got nothing against any individual American, except that there aren't any. They're always Irish-American, African-American... There's never an American-American you can blame.

I'm comfortable, culturally I'm American, my perspectives are American, but from an aesthetic perspective do other people look at me and think that I'm American?

Baseball is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness, American Dash, Discipline, Determination, American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm, American Pluck, Persistency, Performance, American Spirit, Sagacity, Success, American Vim, Vigor, Virility.

As a newcomer to America who learned to 'speak American' by watching movies, I firmly believe that to change the politics of immigration and citizenship, we must change culture - the way we portray undocumented people like me and our role in society.

Quite frankly, I think if a man or a woman likes their American job, wherever they were born, they should be able to keep that job. We need a clear path to citizenship for workers who are already here and a fair and efficient on-ramp for those who want to come here.

It's about time that we create first class citizenship for every American plain and simple. Every New Jersey-ian. This should not be a popular vote. This is something we should do now.

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task. This is the price and the promise of citizenship.

If somebody's going to earn citizenship, with whatever other hurdles are put in the way, at the end of the road they should be able to speak English, they should be able to read English, they should have some knowledge of American history.

Dubois, later in his life, would join the Communist party and renounce his American citizenship. His 'integration at all costs' message would, decades later, continue to influence the community's self-perception.

American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

Leaving America means renouncing your citizenship, moving out of the country and leaving family and friends behind. You can retain your citizenship if you like, but you'll still be away from loved ones and still be paying taxes. You lose all the good stuff about America and have to keep all the bad stuff.

It is not an exaggeration to say that under Obama, the naturalization process - becoming a citizen - no longer requires becoming an American. The real tragedy and the real crime of the Obama plan for accelerated naturalization of millions flows from the redefinition of citizenship as a triumph of multiculturalism.

I think what I'm doing is quintessentially American because I'm not American - even though I am on the verge of getting my American passport next week - I have a fantasy of what is American. Big spaces, Marlon Brando, James Dean, easy living.

Pound was silly, bumptious, extravagantly generous, annoying, exhibitionistic; Eliot was sensible, cautious, retiring, soothing, shy. Though Pound wrote some brilliant passages, on the whole he was a failure as a poet (sometimes even in his own estimation); Eliot went from success to success and is still quoted--and misquoted--by thousands of people who have never read him. Both men were expatriates by choice, but Eliot renounced his American citizenship and did his best to become assimilated with his fellow British subjects, while Pound always remained an American in exile.

Republicans and Democrats are obsessed with making sure that illegal aliens are granted citizenship. The American people are not. They're concerned about jobs, the economy, debt. They're concerned about a plundering country. They're concerned about a decaying, dying country.

Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony.

I spend most of my time in South Korea but at least one-third of my time is spent traveling around the world, meeting people, speaking about climate change and sustainable development and trying to foster global citizenship especially for young people. What I observe is there clearly is a need for global citizenship. That is exactly right. We are having troubles around the world. We need global vision.

The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American.

It used to be that the highest ambition of American novelists was to write 'the Great American Novel,' that great white whale of American fiction that would encompass all the American experience in one great book.

I think the arts has great potential to create citizens. Citizenship is about the direction your imagination travels. We can't plan or calculate or examine citizenship; it's an imagined thing. Community is an imagined thing. And if your imagination isn't working - and, of course, in oppressed people that's the first thing that goes - you can't imagine anything better. Once you can imagine something different, something better, then you're on your way.

Citizenship is the right to have rights.

When I'm playing an American, I don't play Lennie with an American accent. They're American characters who look like me, but they have different voices.

History is the key to citizenship.

One of the revelations in that book [Lincoln in the Bardo] for me was this idea about citizenship. Even that word - citizenship - for someone my age, it makes me cringe. But, to me, the political space we're in now argues for a reboot of fairly simple ideas and the examination of the way that Americans have not been living into them.

You can either be in the Ron Paul tradition and say there's nothing wrong with heroin and cocaine, or you can be in the tradition that says, 'These kind of addictive drugs are terrible; they deprive you of full citizenship, and they lead you to a dependency which is antithetical to being an American.'

You wouldn't replace your carpet at home if you still had a hole in the roof...We're talking about any time you start waving a carrot such as American citizenship without securing the borders, that number [of undocumented immigrants] that we have today I believe will double or triple.

Social media changed Chinese mindset. More and more Chinese intend to embrace freedom of speech and human rights as their birthright, not some imported American privilege. But also, it gave the Chinese a national public sphere for people to, it's like a training of their citizenship, preparing for future democracy.

There are artists in Belgium who try to imitate American artists. But it's like, if you're Belgian pretending to be American, you won't be better than the American because you aren't American. You have to do your own stuff.

I love and admire the American culture and the American dream. I learnt so many things about the American shoe industry and marketing strategies. I caught the secrets of American casual wear, that is elegant and wearable, retro and modern, and mixed it with an Italian touch, luxurious and handmade.

These are people who wanted to provide for their family and wanted a better life. We've got to have a secure border. But we've also, we've got to act compassionately and recognize labor markets as well. ... I've never thought that it's [path to citizenship] a bad thing. If somebody is going to be here for 20, 30 years, to give them some skin in the game, if you will, to hold out the prospect of citizenship.

I have dual citizenship.

Any new pathway to citizenship is completely off the table ... [Illegal immigrants should be able to get citizenship] the same way as any other immigrant has to do it ... You have to apply for legal permanent residence, be it family-based or employment-based. You shouldn't be treated worse than the people doing it the right way, but I think it would be unconscionable for us to treat them better than the people who are doing it the right way.

We are not going to round up and deport 12 million people, but we're not going to hand out citizenship cards, either. There will be a process. We will see what the American people are willing to support. But it will not be unconstitutional executive orders like the ones Barack Obama has forced on us.

As long as I live, I will never forget that day 21 years ago when I raised my hand and took the oath of citizenship. Do you know how proud I was? I was so proud that I walked around with an American flag around my shoulders all day long.

... the connection between imperial politics and culture is astonishingly direct. American attitudes to American "greatness", to hierarchies of race, to the perils of "other" revolutions (the American revolution being considered unique and somehow unrepeatable anywhere else in the world) have remained constant, have dictated, have obscured, the realities of empire, while apologists for overseas American interests have insisted on American innocence, doing good, fighting for freedom.

We watched the U.S. citizenship immigration services web site in March. They had six million, two hundred thousand hits, and two million people downloaded applications for citizenship. So what we're doing is attempting to help people in that process.

There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship. We pledge allegiance to one flag, and that flag is the American flag.

I grew up watching American movies. My favorite movies have always been American, since as long as I can remember. I always had this huge respect for American filmmakers and American actors.

I think the American people have a generous instinct. They understand that we're a nation of immigrants. But if those folks are going to live in this country, they have to be put on a pathway to citizenship that involves them paying a fine, making sure that they are at the back of the line and not cutting in front of people who applied legally to come into the country.

We need American sources of resources, we need American energy, brought to you by American ingenuity and produced by American workers.