People's Authority Quotes

That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all amenable to them.

The power of Kings and Magistrates is nothing else, but what is only derivative, transferred and committed to them in trust from the People.

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the states [from the Union]. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it.

The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.

The right solemnly proclaimed at the birth of the States, and which has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the bills of rights of the States subsequently admitted into the Union of 1789, undeniably recognizes in the people the power to resume the authority delegated for the purposes of Government.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

We are an inclusive rather than an exclusive party …. The authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.

Our adversaries have adopted some declarations of independence, in which, unlike our the good old one penned by Jefferson, they omit the words "all men are created equal." Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which, unlike our good old one signed by Washington, they omit "We, the people," and substitute: "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent states." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view the rights of men and the authority of the people?

In the United States the people are the government; and their united voice is the only sovereign that should rule; the only power that should be obeyed; and the only gentlemen that should be honored; at home and abroad; on the land and the sea.

The President of the United States is not the Sovereign of the United States. There is a very near analogy between the position of the President of the United States and that of the Prime Minister of England, and both are paid at much the same rate — the income of a second-class professional man. The Sovereign of the United States is the people;

We believe that the people are the source of all governmental power; that the authority of the people is to be extended, not restricted.

I think it's time for the Army to understand that power should be enshrined in the people if we are to be a genuine democracy and not in any particular institution or organisation.

Office holders are the agents of the people, not their masters.

The express authority of the people alone could give validity to the Constitution.

The Federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers and designed for different purposes…. The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone.

The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for a certain limited period, to representatives of their own choosing; and whenever it is executed contrary to their interest, or not agreeable to their wishes, their servants can, and undoubtedly will, be recalled.

There is an original, undivided and incommunicable authority and supremacy in the collective body of the people, to whom all delegated power must submit, and from whom there is no appeal.

The voice of the Constitution is the inescapably solemn self-consciousness of the people giving the law unto themselves.

When it comes to our Constitution, judges perform, certainly, an important role. But the people, acting through their elected representatives, should play an even more important role.

All authority belongs to the people... In questions of power let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with chains of the Constitution.

To the people belongs the power of approving or rejecting laws and, which is still of greater importance, peace and war are likewise fixed by their deliberations. When any alliance is concluded, any war ended, or treaty made; to them the conditions are referred, and by them either annulled or ratified. And thus again, from a view of all these circumstances, it might with reason be imagined, that the people had engrossed the largest portion of the government, and that the state was plainly a democracy.

For 40 years, I have not been the ruler - the authority has been with the people. They take nothing from me or add anything to me.

. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.

The power of the legislative being derived from the people by a positive voluntary grant and institution, can be no other than what that positive grant conveyed, which being only to make laws, and not to make legislators, the legislative can have no power to transfer their authority of making laws, and place it in other hands.

A corporation has no rights except those given it by law. It can exercise no power except that conferred upon it by the people through legislation, and the people should be as free to withhold as to give, public interest and not private advantage being the end in view.