Power to the People Quotes

I believe, in America, we're a nation of people that are self-governors. This idea that only a chosen few elites have the ability to make decisions is foreign to me.

Fellow Peasants: No hand will after this day be above your hand… You are the producers. Yours is the power.

Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singer who got 3 or 4 Cadillacs, saying power to the people, dance to the music, wants you to pat him on the back.

[T]he powers granted by the proposed Constitution are the gift of the people, and may be resumed by them when perverted to their oppression, and every power not granted thereby remains with the people.

But above all, what this Congress can be remembered for is opening the way to a new American revolutiona peaceful revolution in which power was turned back to the peoplein which government at all levels was refreshed and renewed and made truly responsive. This can be a revolution as profound, as far-reaching, as exciting as that first revolution almost 200 years agoand it can mean that just 5 years from now America will enter its third century as a young nation new in spirit, with all the vigor and the freshness with which it began its first century.

This is the core claim of populism. Only some of the people are really the people.

Everything would be alright if everything was put back in the hands of the people, and we're going to have to put it back in the hands of the people.

No free people ever existed, or can ever exist, without keeping the purse strings in their own hands. Where this is the case, they have a constitutional check upon the administration, which may thereby by brought into order without violence. But when such a power is not lodged in the people, oppression proceeds uncontrolled in its career, till the governed, transported into rage, seek redress in the midst of blood and confusion.

If things do not change, there will be nothing left to change. Either power must pass to the people or everything will perish.

Distrust of authority should be the first civic duty.

No government can continue good, but under the control of the people.

Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful stroke!