I wanted to be what my high-school civics and history teacher thought of as a good American. That automatically involved taking an interest in government.
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is.
We are in a mutually dependent society, called civilization, and government is the oil that keeps it running and the lifeblood that carries oxygen to the various parts of the civic body.
Skepticism is the agent of reason against organized irrationalism--and is therefore one of the keys to human social and civic decency.
Rand Paul comes off like an academic stiff who wants to give us a lecture on American civics.
What I find is most people have a civics book understanding for how Congress works and how a bill moves.
There's a generation of people I think without a strong connection to family, to religion, to civic duty. They have a real disassociation from the problems of the world.
I think there is a new awareness in this 21st century that design is as important to where and how we live as it is for museums, concert halls and civic buildings.
A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.
I had become increasingly concerned in recent years about the lack of civics education in our nation's schools. In recent years, the schools have stopped teaching it. And it's unfortunate.
The whole, 'Is the Internet a good thing or a bad thing'? We're done with that. It's just a thing. How to maximise its civic value, its public good - that's the really big challenge.
The fact that so many of your people are today residents and citizens of the United States, lending their influence to our civic and economic life, which has meant so much to our development.
Media corporations have a civic responsibility not only to prevent fraud and financial abuse, but also to not corrupt or degrade our culture.
It is the State which educates its citizens in civic virtue, gives them a consciousness of their mission and welds them into unity.
The way to get people civically engaged, not just during the election but throughout the year, is to tap into Facebook and let them do it with their friends.
I believe an invitation from the Commission on Presidential Debates is similar to a draft notice - a civic responsibility.
Each social formation, through each of its material activities, exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and ideals wins also its place and power.
Science, which is not so attached to 'truth' as it once was, ut more to immediate 'effectiveness', is now drifting towards a decline, it's civic fall from grace.
Paying tax should be framed as a glorious civic duty worthy of gratitude - not a punishment for making money.
I grew up in Minnesota, where we treasure our tradition of civic engagement - and our record of having the nation's highest voter participation.
Civics is not only how to run the country before it's your turn to run the country; it is, in fact, the study of power, practical political power. And you must start that process at an age level when kids' brains are still open and malleable.
