Representation of the People Quotes

Unless the mass retains sufficient control over those entrusted with the powers of their government, these will be perverted to their own oppression, and to the perpetuation of wealth and power in the individuals and their families selected for the trust. Whether our Constitution has hit on the exact degree of control necessary, is yet under experiment

Every generation of Americans writes its own Constitution.

All anyone needs to enjoy the state legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people. As long as you don't think about what that peculiar body should be doing and what it actually is doing to the quality of life in Texas, then it's all marvelous fun.

Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity

In order to enable and encourage a representative of the publick to discharge his publick trust with firmness and success, it is indispensably necessary that he should enjoy the fullest liberty of speech, and that he should be protected from the resentment of everyone, however powerful, to whom the exercise of that liberty may occasion offence

The President is the CEO of this business that we call America.

We got our revolution out of the way long before the French and the Americans. The monarchy was restored, but the sovereignty of our parliament, made up of and elected by a slowly widening constituency of the people, has never been seriously challenged since then.

The Congress may have made mistakes, but their ideology is not wrong.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

[Commenting on Shays' Rebellion:] The way to prevent these regular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro' the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people.

I see my task as serving the majority of people. The question is, how do you find out what they want, how best to serve them? My answer is to stay close to ordinary people because, at heart, I am one of 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.

Various political parties, even if they're in direct opposition with one another, still say they are the spokesperson for the people. The writer must speak his own words and not get mixed up with politics.

I do not represent public opinion. I represent the public. There is a wide difference between the two, between the real interests of the public and the public’s opinion of those interests.

If they won’t listen, we should limit the Politicians’ terms and send them packing..

Remember, the Congress doesn't get as many opportunities to make an impression with the public.

Polling is merely an instrument for gauging public opinion. When a President or any other leader pays attention to poll results, he is, in effect, paying attention to the views of the people.

The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.

I have seen in the Halls of Congress more idealism, more humaneness, more compassion, more profiles of courage than in any other institution that I have ever known.

One of the most enjoyable things I do at Government House and when I travel around Australia is to talk with children. I tell them about our parliamentary democracy - and I often do that as I'm walking into an Executive Council meeting next door!

We have a media that presents every politician as being as bad as the next. There is no distinguishing between one good idea or another; no explanation of why constitutional change should be uppermost in the minds of the people I represent.

Democracy is not meant to be efficient, it is meant to be fair.

The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.

The cost of fielding a candidate has become so astronomical that the concept of a people’s candidate is just an abstraction.

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.