Mairead Corrigan Maguire Quotes

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

There's much more we can be doing in Parliament, we could be giving more power back to people at local government level, through local referendums.

What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people versus just having somebody in Washington make a rule.

The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.

I'm a great believer in governments doing as little as possible and people power doing the rest, so I'm in favour of governments being there to govern in the areas that need governing, not a whole heap of other things that they stick their sticky fingers into.

There are many ways of encouraging people to make life better other than joining a political party. Politics with a small 'p' isn't just about darkened committee rooms, endless meetings - it is about giving people the right to make decisions about our lives.

Let us put the normal divisions of politics aside. Let us come together as one country; let us seize this historic moment to shift the balance of power from the corridors of Westminster to the streets and communities of Scotland.

If our society is to address social issues, it will be done at the local level or not at all.

Democracy, in any active sense, begins and ends in communities small enough for their members to meet face to face.

what I love about city government is that the citizens can create whatever kind of city they're willing to build.

I really believe you've gotta put the power in the people. They're the ones who are gonna make the experience.

The people who care the most about the folks in your community are living in the community. They don't live in Washington, D.C.

Conservatives believe in patriotism, but equally in community and the importance of local identity. We believe in devolution. We believe in localism. We believe that decisions should be taken locally wherever is practical; that communities matter.

Getting money out of Whitehall and down to the town hall is also essential if we are going to address the crisis of confidence - and alienation - in our politics.

No more top-down politics with Westminster dictating what's right for every community. We must all be partners in designing a better future for our country.

Barack is at a level where he can't - no matter how much he wants to or how much we want him to - he's not going to come take out our garbage, so to speak. He can't be the garbage man and the president. He can't be the mayor and the alderman. He can't fill all those roles. So I always push for local, local activity on the political scene.

I know that government doesn't have the all solutions that real solutions do not come from the top down. Instead, the ways to end poverty come from all of us. We are part of the solution.

Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.

When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.

We've got to figure out a way to cause communities to also want them, the political, organized bodies.

All politics is local.

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

Separation and devolution are two completely different concepts which cannot be mixed together. One is not a stop on the way to the other.

What we have ignored is what citizens can do and the importance of real involvement of the people involved - versus just having somebody in Washington make a rule.

When governments become large, voters cannot exercise close oversight, otherwise known as political power.