Pillar for January/February

CITIZENSHIP

CHARACTER:

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It's the only thing."
Albert Schweitzer

To be nobody but yourself - in a world which is doing its best, night and
day, to make you everybody but yourself - means to fight the hardest battle
which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting."
E. E. Cummings

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized
anyway."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"Character is formed by doing the thing we are supposed to do, when it should
be done, whether we feel like doing it or not."
Father Edward Flanagan, Boy’s Town

"Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and
acts, thought by thought, action by action."
Helen Gahagan Douglas

"Character building begins in our infancy and continues until death."
Eleanor Roosevelt

"It is easier to prevent bad habits than to break them."
Benjamin Franklin

 

CITIZENSHIP The duties, rights, conduct and responsibilities of the citizen
of a state.

Do your share to make your school and community better * Cooperate * Stay
informed; vote * Be a good neighbor * Obey laws and rules * Respect authority
* Protect the environment.

Citizenship Quotes:

"I am only one, but still I am one; I cannot do everything, but still I can
do something; and because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the
something that I can do."
Edward E. Hale

"Don't find a fault; find a remedy."
Henry Ford
(1863-1947, American Industrialist, Founder of Ford Motor Company)

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I
have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as
brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations."
George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist)

"To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal
of false friends; To appreciate beauty; To find the best in others;
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden
patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has
breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist)

"Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the
dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot'
than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you,
stand up and be counted at any cost. "
Thomas J. Watson
(18?-1956, American Businessman, Founder of IBM)

"Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give
us the determination to make the right things happen."
Peter Marshall

"Power in the best sense is not power for yourself, but power that you share
with your community."
Anne Richards, politician

"The first step toward liberation for any group is to use the power in
hand…And the power in hand is the vote."
Helen Gahagan Douglas, U. S. congresswoman, actor, singer, 1900-1980

"Let how you live your life stand for something, no matter how small and
incidental it may seem."
Jodie Foster, actor, director, movie producer

"In every community there is work to be done…In every heart there is the
power to do it."
Marianne Williamson, writer, speaker

"As stewards of this planet, we need to make sure that we don’t damage it.
And if we can, we must leave it better than when we came."
Sandra Day O’Connor, U. S. Supreme Court justice

"How lovely to think that no one need wait a moment, we can start now, start
slowly changing the world!"
Anne Frank, diarist, 1929-1945

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change
the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead, anthropologist, 1901-1977

"Our work as citizens is a lot like housework: It never ends. We can either
wring our hands in despair or use them to roll up our shirtsleeves and try to
find new ways to make a difference."
Pat Schroeder, former U. S. congresswoman

"It’s up to each of us to contribute something to this wonderful world."
Eve Arden

"Service is the rent you pay for room on this earth."
Shirley Chisolm

"Cooperation is doing with a smile what you have to do anyway."
Anonymous

"Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize
the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural
resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to
rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us."
Theodore Roosevelt

"It is our task in our time and in our generation to hand down undiminished
to those who come after us, as was handed down to us by those who went
before, the natural wealth and beauty which is ours."
John F. Kennedy

"The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Our ideals, laws and customs should be based on the proposition that each
generation in turn becomes the custodian rather than the absolute owner of
our resources-and each generation has the obligation to pass this inheritance
on to the future."
Alden Whitman

"The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance
also the lives of men."
Franklin Delano Roosevelt

"Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man does not
weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the
web he does to himself."
Chief Seattle

"How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms; by
truth when it is attacked by lies; by democratic faith when it is attacked by
authoritarian dogma. Always, and in the final act, by dedication and faith."
Archibald MacLeish

"The real threat of crime is what it does to ourselves and our communities.
No nation hiding behind locked doors is free, for it is imprisoned by its own
fear."
Robert F. Kennedy

"How hard it is to die and leave one’s country no better than if one had
never lived for it."
Abraham Lincoln

(1902-1949, American Presbyterian Clergyman)

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big
difference, ignore the small daily differences we can make which,
over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."
Marian Wright Edelman
(1939-, American Lobbyist on Behalf of Children)

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes
from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship,
their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they
realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and
that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This
is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The
second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the
third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you
should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there
is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men."
Black Elk
(19th Century American Native Religious Leader)

"Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken
out of the gun."
Martin Amis
(1949-, British Author)

"All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions."
Adlai E. Stevenson
(1900-1965, American Lawyer, Politician)

"I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success
of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it
regardless of the possible outcome."
Golda Meir
(1898-1978, Prime Minister of Israel, 1969-74)

"In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show
their good qualities in action."
Aristotle
(BC 384-322, Greek Philosopher)

"So I vowed to keep myself alive, but only if I would never use me again for
just me - each one of us is born of two, and we really belong to each other.
I vowed to do my own thinking, instead of trying to accommodate everyone
else's opinion, credo's and theories. I vowed to apply my inventory of
experiences to the solving of problems that affect everyone aboard planet
Earth."
Buckminster Fuller
(American Engineer, Inventor, Designer, Architect "Geodesic Dome")

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."
Mahatma Gandhi
(1869-1948, Indian Political, Spiritual Leader)

"Many people have the wrong idea about what constitutes true
happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through
fidelity to a worthy purpose."
Helen Keller
(1880-1968, American Blind/Deaf Author, Lecturer)

"What the people want is very simple. They want an America as good as its
promise."
Barbara Jordan, 20th-century congresswoman and professor

"The most important political office is that of private citizen."
Louis Brandeis

"Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your
country."
John Fitzgerald Kennedy

"We are living beyond our means. As a people we have developed a life-style
that is draining the earth of its priceless and irreplaceable resources
without regard for the future of our children and people all around the
world."
Margaret Mead

"A nation, as a society, forms a moral person, and every member of it is
personally responsible for his society."
Thomas Jefferson, 18th-century American Founding Father, early 19th century
U.S. President (letter to George Hammond, 1792)

"It is strangely absurd to suppose that a million of human beings, collected
together, are not under the same moral laws which bind each of them
separately."
Thomas Jefferson, 18th-century American Founding Father, early 19th-century
U.S. President (letter to George Logan, 1816)

"There is hope if people will begin to awaken that spiritual part of
themselves-that heartfelt acknowledgment that we are the caretakers of life
on this planet."
Brooke Medicine Eagle

"Americanism is a question of principles, of idealism, of character: it is
not a matter of birthplace or creed or line of descent."
Theodore Roosevelt, 19th/20th-century American adventurer and politician,
Nobel Prize-winning U.S. President

"If we are forced, at every hour, to watch or listen to horrible events, this
constant stream of ghastly impressions will deprive even the most delicate
among us of all respect for humanity."
Cicero (Marcus Tullius), Roman orator, philosopher and statesman

"Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, 19th-century American essayist, public philosopher and
poet

"In a time of social fragmentation, vulgarity becomes a way of life. To be
shocking becomes more important — and often more profitable — than to be
civil or creative or truly original.’’
Al Gore, 20th/21st-century American politician, vice president of the U.S.

"Like the body that is made up of different limbs and organs, all moral
creatures must depend on each other to exist."
Hindu proverb

"Politeness is the art of choosing among one’s real thoughts."
Adlai Stevenson II, 20th-century American politician, presidential candidate

"We are all angels with only one wing. We can only fly while embracing each
other."
Luciano De Crescenzo

"It is in the shelter of each other that people live."
Irish proverb

"Life is a place of service, and in that service one has to suffer a great
deal that is hard to bear, but more often to experience a great deal of joy.
But that joy can be real only if people look upon their lives as a service
and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal
happiness."
Count Leo Tolstoy, 19th-century Nobel Prize-winning Russian novelist

"But it was impossible to save the Great Republic. She was rotten to the
heart. Lust of conquest had long ago done its work; trampling upon the
helpless abroad had taught her, by a natural process, to endure with apathy
the like at home; multitudes who had applauded the crushing of other people’s
liberties, lived to suffer for their mistake in their own persons. The
government was irrevocably in the hands of the prodigiously rich and their
hangers-on; the suffrage was become a mere machine, which they used as they
chose. There was no principle but commercialism, no patriotism but of the
pocket."
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), 19th-century American humorist, author and
journalist

"Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and
leave a trail."
Unknown

"The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the
conviction and will to carry on."
Walter Lippmann, 20th-century American journalist, author and public
philosopher

"If we lived in a state where virtue was profitable, common sense would make
us saintly. But since we see that avarice, anger, pride and stupidity
commonly profit far beyond charity, modesty, justice and thought, perhaps we
must stand fast a little, even at the risk of being heroes."
Sir Thomas More in the movie "A Man For All Seasons" (1966, screenplay by
Robert Bolt)

"The people have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine
right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge – I mean of the
character and conduct of their rulers."
John Adams, 18th-century American Founding Father, second U.S. President

"Character is the only secure foundation of the state."
Calvin Coolidge, 20th-century American President

"A man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief
among so many who are not virtuous."
Niccolo Machiavelli, Florentine Renaissance writer and political adviser

"With all the power that a President has, the most important thing to bear in
mind is this: You must not give power to a man unless, above everything else,
he has character. Character is the most important qualification the President
of the United States can have."
Richard Nixon (from TV ad for Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign in
1964)

"All leaders must face some crisis where their own strength of character is
the enemy."
Richard Reeves, 20th-century American journalist and essayist

"In a President, character is everything. A President doesn't have to be
brilliant... He doesn't have to be clever; you can hire clever... You can
hire pragmatic, and you can buy and bring in policy wonks. But you can’t buy
courage and decency, you can’t rent a strong moral sense. A President must
bring those things with him. He needs to have, in that much maligned word,
but a good one nonetheless, a "vision" of the future he wishes to create. But
a vision is worth little if a President doesn’t have the character – the
courage and heart – to see it through."
Peggy Noonan, 20th century American author, speech writer for U.S. President
Ronald Reagan

"Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back upon himself." Charles
DeGaulle, 20th century French general and President, founder of the Fifth
Republic

"Character is power."
Booker T. Washington, late 19th century American educator

"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s
character, give him power."
Abraham Lincoln, 19th-century American President

"It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I
pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not
at the same time truly virtuous."
Benjamin Franklin, 18th century American Founding Father, inventor and
statesman

"Political interest [can] never be separated in the long run from moral
right."
Thomas Jefferson, 18th-century American Founding Father, early 19th century
U.S. President (letter to James Monroe, 1806)

"I don't like people who are in politics for themselves and not for others.
You want that, you can go into show business.''
Elvis Presley, 20th-century American celebrity singer

"There is a secret pride in every human heart that revolts at tyranny. You
may order and drive an individual, but you cannot make him respect you."
William Hazlitt, early 18th-century English essayist and literary critic

"You can only govern men by serving them."
Victor Cousin

"A politician would do well to remember that he has to live with his
conscience longer than he does with his constituents."
Melvin R. Laird, 20th-century American secretary of defense

"Never create by law what can be accomplished by morality." Charles-Louis
de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, 17th/18th century French jurist and
political philosopher

"Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy; but good
administration can never save bad policy."
Adlai Stevenson, 20th-century American politician, presidential candidate

"Politics is the art of controlling the environment."
Hunter S. Thomson, 20th-century American journalist and writer

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