The Bill of Obligations Quotes

“Go visit any of the presidential libraries or the National Archives. Watch or better yet sit in on a committee hearing of Congress or your state legislature. Go to the local school board meeting. Attend oral arguments at the Supreme Court. Walk a Civil War battlefield. Do not skip out on serving on a jury. You will come away with a new appreciation of how we got to where we are and why what is best about this country is worth preserving.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“My own list includes Allen Drury, Advise and Consent; Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men; Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird; George Orwell, 1984; Gore Vidal, Washington, D.C.; Sinclair Lewis, It Can’t Happen Here. I am also a big fan of the books and short stories of Ward Just. My son came of age watching The West Wing, and I loved both the riotously funny if cynical book and British TV series Yes, Minister. And, even if it is not a substitute for reading The Federalist Papers, you would be hard pressed to spend a more enjoyable evening than watching the musical Hamilton.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“More generally, local newspapers can also be valuable when it comes to state and local politics. Ideally your local paper makes use of reputable news services such as the Associated Press or Reuters to supplement what they themselves can do.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized; George Packer’s Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal; Evan Osnos’s Wildland: The Making of America’s Fury; Yascha Mounk’s The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure; Suzanne Mettler and Robert Lieberman’s Four Threats: The Recurring Crises of American Democracy; Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die; Bill Bishop and Robert Cushing’s The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart; and Michael Sandel’s Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy. I also suggest you read the January/February 2022 issue of the Atlantic. For contrast, and decidedly more upbeat, is Robert Putnam’s The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. The public hearings held by the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol should be required viewing and are readily available online.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“When it comes to the latter, you would be hard-pressed to go wrong if the author’s name happens to be Beschloss, Caro, Kearns Goodwin, McCullough, Meacham, Logevall, Reeves, or Schlesinger.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“would suggest you read and reread his Gettysburg Address. It is the best example I know of that less is often more.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“In the course of writing this book, I did something I had never done before that I now recommend to you: go back and read speeches by the presidents, above all their inaugural and farewell addresses. They are readily available on the Internet. Not all are memorable, much less poetic, but a few are one or the other or both, and every one is valuable as a window on the moment it was delivered.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Here I would mention Samuel P. Huntington’s American Politics: The Promise of Disharmony, Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan, and almost any book by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. (in particular his The Cycles of American History). I would also recommend Gordon Wood, Power and Liberty: Constitutionalism in the American Revolution; Robert A. Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics; Akhil Reed Amar, The Words That Made Us: America’s Constitutional Conversation, 1760–1840; Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture; and the personal book by Danielle Allen, Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship Since Brown v. Board of Education.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“have assembled a partial list: Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West; Peter Kolchin, American Slavery: 1619–1877; Henry Louis Gates Jr., Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow; Tina Cassidy, Mr. President, How Long Must We Wait?: Alice Paul, Woodrow Wilson, and the Fight for the Right to Vote; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954–63; and Annette Gordon-Reed, On Juneteenth. I would also recommend reading writings by or about some of the pivotal figures in the fight for political equality, such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Susan B. Anthony, and Martin Luther King Jr.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“would then suggest delving into history. There are far too many excellent books on the various phases of American history to mention, but some that I have found most memorable over the years include James McPherson on the Civil War (Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era), Richard Hofstadter’s The Age of Reform as well as his The American Political Tradition: And the Men Who Made It, and Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower. Books that take a larger sweep of this country’s past include Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People, and, most recently, the volume by Jill Lepore, These Truths: A History of the United States.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Some two centuries later, the forty-third president of the United States, George W. Bush, made a similar point. “The public interest depends on private character, on integrity and tolerance toward others and the rule of conscience in our own lives. Self-government relies, in the end, on the governing of the self.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“happen more than anything else is an abundance of character, what in earlier times was known as virtue. James Madison, a founding father and the country’s fourth president, was explicit on its centrality to the democratic project: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Putting democracy and the country founded on it first is the only way to preserve and, better yet, improve a United States of America that for any and all of its shortcomings and flaws is still the most successful political experiment in human history and the one with the greatest potential. As he did so often, Abraham Lincoln said it best: “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“There are obviously major problems both with these words (the Declaration speaks of men, not people) and with the disconnect between the words and the American reality at the time, above all slavery, limits on rights for women, the treatment of the Indigenous peoples who were living here when the colonists arrived, and subsequent discrimination against multiple waves of immigrants. Nevertheless, the ideas represented a major step forward when they were articulated and remain relevant today. The notion that a person’s fate is not determined by circumstances of birth over which he or she had no control is radical, as is the idea that government derives its legitimacy from those it governs, not from a hereditary family or a self-appointed few.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“The United States is particularly vulnerable to this failure to educate its citizens as to their heritage, as this is a country grounded not on a single religion or race or ethnicity (as are so many other countries) but on a set of ideas. These ideas are rooted in our history. Delineated in the Declaration of Independence, the new country made its case for breaking free from British rule as a necessary means to realizing the end of creating a society in which all men are created equal, endowed with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. For its part, the government of the newly independent country would derive its mandate from the consent of the governed.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“small part gave rise to this book is that we are failing to fulfill the obligation to pass down the essentials of what it means to be an American and citizen of the United States of America. Ironically, this does not apply to the newest citizens, immigrants. They often understand this country and its worth as much or more than anyone. After all, they chose to come here. They studied to pass the exam required for citizenship. They often escaped a country where economic opportunities were limited, where they did not have the freedom to speak”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Government service thus promises multiple payoffs. It would help to challenge the inaccurate and counterproductive perception that government is remote and unresponsive or, worse yet, an occupied foreign power. It is thus fully consistent with the obligation to get involved. The experience might just encourage some of our most talented young people to serve in the government or even to make it their career. If so, we would all benefit.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“As a result, trust—essential if people in a society are to work together constructively—is in short supply. An added benefit of more widespread national service is that it would also expose young people to government, breaking down the perception of government as alien from the people.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Incentivizing government service, though, would be altogether different. Why should we want young Americans to perform one or two years of government service? One reason is that a common experience would help break down some of the barriers that have arisen owing to geography, class, race, religion, education, language, and more. World War II did precisely this for millions of Americans. Today, however, there is simply too little common experience in this society and too much that reinforces differences and divisions. It is revealing that according to a recent poll, almost half of second-year college students report they wouldn’t choose to room with someone who supported a different presidential candidate than they did in 2020, while a majority say they wouldn’t go on a date with someone who voted differently and nearly two-thirds couldn’t envision marrying someone who supported a different candidate.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“To be clear, the overwhelming percentage of those who work in the federal branch are civil servants. A president gets to appoint on the order of four thousand people to senior positions. Whether someone is a political appointee or a civil servant, there are limits to how we can compensate those in government; there is no way this compensation can compete with Wall Street or Fortune 500 companies. What we can do is offer these people our respect.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Most relevant is that smoking poses a direct health threat to others. Those who breathe in secondhand smoke can become ill even if they themselves are not smoking. This is what led to limits or bans of smoking in public places and shared spaces, from bars and restaurants to trains, buses, planes, and offices. Quite simply, my right to health, to clean air, and to not breathe in your smoke outweighs your right to smoke. Again, returning to Mill, smoking is fair game for government intervention and regulation, as it can harm others.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Take smoking. In principle we should all have the right to smoke if we want to, despite the overwhelming evidence that smoking can kill the smoker. Judged from the standard set by Mill, smoking appears to be acceptable, something dangerous but not worthy of government restrictions except in the case of minors, since they are presumably not yet in a position to make responsible choices for themselves. But the calculation quickly gets more complex. When smokers become ill, this is a burden on the health-care system and the society more generally, as it leads to early exit from the work force. So we all indirectly subsidize those who smoke by paying higher health-care premiums or disability payments or by not benefitting from what they might contribute to the economy and to the government via taxes. It is not at all clear, though, whether such harm would be sufficiently great to justify government intervention.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“A related idea is simply to spend some time over coffee or a meal with someone you know who holds very different political positions. The goal is not to persuade them to come over to yours but to come away with a better appreciation of one another’s views and to build a foundation of respect and trust that allows both of you to spend time with one another despite your disagreements.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“What makes this noteworthy is that the gap between the legal philosophies of the liberal Ginsburg and the conservative Scalia was so considerable. They disagreed frequently and fiercely, but were open about learning from one another. Ginsburg was quoted saying Scalia’s dissents forced her to rewrite and, in the process, strengthen the rationale for her decisions; Scalia, for his part, when asked how he could be such good friends with someone he so often disagreed with, replied, “I attack ideas. I don’t attack people.” Their relationship was a model we would all do well to emulate.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“I am reminded of the quote often attributed to the great twentieth-century British economist John Maynard Keynes, who when challenged on just this, is said to have quipped, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Changing one’s mind can be a sign of strength and wisdom, especially if new facts emerge or if what were thought to be facts are shown to be otherwise.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“As Ronald Reagan noted in his autobiography, “If you got 75 or 80 percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later, and that’s what I told these radical conservatives who never got used to it.” Reagan also reflected, “They wanted all or nothing and they wanted it all at once.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Both George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the popular vote, in the latter’s case by nearly three million votes, but were still elected president. Given the realities of the electoral college, candidates all but ignore states where they are sure to win or lose and concentrate their efforts on the handful of states that could tip the balance.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Or think about it this way: twenty-two states with a combined population that approximates California’s have forty-four of the seats in the Senate. The Founders believed that such a system would help prevent a tyranny of the majority, but in fact the country has ended up with something closer to a tyranny of the minority: while most Americans support gun control measures and a woman’s right to choose, a minority has ensured there are few limits on the former and in some states have curtailed access to abortions. Today, a small number of states with a small percentage of the total population have an outsized influence on presidential elections, and as a result there is a growing gap between the popular vote and electoral outcomes.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Moreover, the American system was designed for a population of just over three million, approximately 1 percent of the current total of more than 330 million. It was also built for a country of thirteen states concentrated on the eastern seaboard of the North American continent. Today’s United States numbers fifty states and spans a three-thousand-mile-wide continent and well beyond. It cannot be taken for granted that a system of government can evolve sufficiently to take into account changes of this scale. In this case, it has not; if anything, the American political process has grown more sclerotic and more resistant to making things happen.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens

“Under Article V of the Constitution, an amendment requires a two-thirds majority vote by both the Senate and the House of Representatives and then must be approved by a majority vote of three-fourths of the states. The procedural requirements are daunting. There is in principle an alternative path for considering amendments to the Constitution—a new constitutional convention, convened by a majority vote by two-thirds (thirty-four of fifty) of state legislatures—but this too is a high bar and has yet to happen in practice.”
― Richard N. Haass, The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens