A Quote by Dalton Trumbo
Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.
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Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular gift in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.
If the state cannot be entirely composed of good men, and yet each citizen is expected to do his own business well, and must therefore have virtue, still inasmuch as all the citizens cannot be alike, the virtue of the citizen and of the good man cannot coincide. All must have the virtue of the good citizen - thus, and thus only, can the state be perfect; but they will not have the virtue of a good man, unless we assume that in the good state all the citizens must be good.
I have been fighting for democracy since I was 15 when I organised a strike to oppose the Hong Kong government's plan to introduce the Chinese patriotic school education; 100,000 people surrounded a government building with students asking for democracy for every citizen.
For in a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, "hold office"; every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.
[For business after WWII ] democracy means getting people to regard government as an alien force that's robbing them and oppressing them, not as their government. In a democracy it would be your government.
In any civilized society, it is every citizen's responsibility to obey just laws. But at the same time, it is every citizen's responsibility to disobey unjust laws.
Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine.
Third, and finally, the educated citizen has an obligation to uphold the law. This is the obligation of every citizen in a free and peaceful society--but the educated citizen has a special responsibility by the virtue of his greater understanding. For whether he has ever studied history or current events, ethics or civics, the rules of a profession or the tools of a trade, he knows that only a respect for the law makes it possible for free men to dwell together in peace and progress.
We're just trying to figure out what being a good citizen is, what participating in a democracy is, what taking responsibility for being an American citizen in a global context means to us.
The point of taxation isn't that the government knows better than you how to spend your money - it's that the government, by virtue of being the government, can spend money in ways that no private citizen or group no matter how powerful, can.
We need government and business to work together for the benefit of everyone. It should no longer be just about typical "corporate social responsibility" where the "responsibility" bit is usually the realm of a small team buried in a basement office - now it should be about every single person in a business taking responsibility to make a difference in everything they do, at work and in their personal lives.
I think it's the height of patriotism to continue to exercise your right as a citizen and to hold your government to account. Isn't that what the very essence of democracy is about?
You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not government's responsibility. It is not your school's or your social club's or your church's or your neighbor's or your fellow citizen's. It is yours, utterly and singularly yours.
The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live. Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.
The most important job of the entrepreneur begins before there is a business or employees. The job of an entrepreneur is to design a business that can grow, employ many people, add value to its customers, be a responsible corporate citizen, bring prosperity to all those that work on the business, be charitable, and eventually no longer need the entrepreneur. Before there is a business, a successful entrepreneur is designing this type of business in his or her mind's eye. According my rich dad, this is the job of a true entrepreneur.
Business is cold and harsh. Business doesn't consider your personal needs or the ends of your family. Business doesn't allow you to keep to your job after you slaved at a place for 20+ years. Rather than increase your benefits, business cuts you out of the job situation so that you're job-hunting, off to find a far less prestigious position.
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