Citizenship Assignment and Quotes
  Senior Portfolio Assignments

1. What is citizenship?

2. What are my personal goals and/or commitments, in regards to being a member of this democracy?

Things to think about:

“Citizenship consists in the service of the country”—Jawaharlal Nehru

“Man is at the bottom an animal, midway, a citizen, and at the top, divine. But the climate of this world is such that few ripen at the top.”—Henry Ward Beecher

The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men.—Plato

“A generation that acquires knowledge without ever understanding how that knowledge can benefit the community is a generation that is not learning what it means to be citizens in a democracy.”—Elizabeth L. Hollander

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

“As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.”—Adlai E. Stevenson

“Gardens, scholars say, are the first sign of commitment to a community. When people plant corn they are saying, let’s stay here. And by their connection to the land, they are connected to one another.”—Anne Raver

“Citizenship is what makes a republic; monarchies can get along without it”—Mark Twain

“A passive and ignorant citizenry will never create a sustainable world.”—Andrew Gaines

“Citizenship consists in the service of the country”—Jawaharlal Nehru

“Citizens have the natural right and the common sense duty to protect themselves, their families, their communities, and their property...guns are the equalizing tools of self-protection, utopian lamentations notwithstanding.”—Edgar A. Suter

“Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in bonds of fraternal feeling." -- Abraham Lincoln

“Good government is no substitute for self-government.”—Mohandas Gandhi

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”—Margaret Mead

“If you look back in history, you will find the core mission of public education in America was to create places of civic virtue for our children and for our society. As education undergoes the rigors of re-examination and the need for reinvention, it is cruicial to remember that the key role of public schools is to preserve democracy and, that as battered as we might be, our mission is central to the future of this county.”—Paul D. Houston

citizenship_quotes.pdf