Esther Dyson Quotes

Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.

In all forms of government the people is the true legislator.

The public has to have a head, and if the President takes the heads away, the public will have his.

Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.

...nations have no command over their governments, & in fact no influence over them, except of a fleeting & rather ineffectual sort.

If there’s not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat — if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.

Democracy is when the people keep a government in check.

The people have spoken. Their decision is sovereign. We all respect it... I wish good luck to those who will now govern France.

The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough.

In our form of democracy the expression of the popular will can be effected only through the instrumentality of political parties.

Are the governors such exceptionally gifted men as to enable them … to represent the masses and act in the interests of all men better than all men would be able to act for themselves?

This is a democracy, not a dictatorship. Polls give candidates a method to find out what voters want.

In this country the government responds to the people, not the other way around.

We" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people

I trust the American People more than American Institutions.

We all know that in democracies, some of these [necessary] reforms are unpopular.

The Sovereign is no other than the vote of the people.

Congress is where Americans are supposed to have our big, messy political fights. That's because the people who make the laws need to be hired and fired by the people. Don't like the laws? Fire the lawmakers.

Look, the people will elect the government they think best.

I doubt the people of North Carolina will be content to allow the governor to decide or even unduly influence selecting their senator.

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them.

If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.