William Jennings Bryan Quotes

Nearly all legislation involves a weighing of public needs as against private desires; and likewise a weighing of relative social values.

Legislative activity is always best based on care for the people.

I want a Supreme Court that doesn't always side with corporate interests.

Let the welfare of the people be the ultimate law.

I feel strongly that the Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people, not on the side of the powerful corporations and the wealthy.

A corporation is a state created institution, state supported institution, its concentration of private power, there is no reason why it should have the rights of persons.

It is imperative to exercise over big business a control and supervision which is unnecessary as regards small business. All business must be conducted under the law, and all business men, big or little, must act justly. But a wicked big interest is necessarily more dangerous to the community than a wicked little interest. 'Big business' in the past has been responsible for much of the special privilege which must be unsparingly cut out of our national life.

Laws should be made to serve the people. People should not be made to serve the laws.

A thump thump thump noise that was so unfamiliar, and yet I couldn't quite place it. But I knew it. It was - "Mmm-hmmm," Monica murmured, just as Wes came view into the path. He was running, his pace quick and steady. He was in shorts, his shirt off, staring ahead as he passed. His back was tan and gleaming with sweat.

I am going to work with people who hold similar views to me inside Congress, outside of Congress to make certain that we come together to stop Trump from doing some of the very ugly things that he has talked about doing.

The true friend of property, the true conservative, is he who insists that property shall be the servant and not the master of the commonwealth; who insists that the creature of man’s making shall be the servant and not the master of the man who made it. The citizens of the United States must effectively control the mighty commercial forces which they have called into being. There can be no effective control of corporations while their political activity remains. To put an end to it will be neither a short nor an easy task, but it can be done.

In environments where corporations become too interventionist and capture regulation themselves, the government must be able to battle back so that the people have a chance.

The true forms of government, therefore, are those in which the one, or the few, or the many, govern with a view to the common interest; but governments which rule with a view to the private interest, whether of the one or of the few, or of the many, are perversions. For the members of a state, if they are truly citizens, ought to participate in its advantages.

The public interest may be presumed to be what men would choose if they saw clearly, thought rationally, acted disinterestedly and benevolently.

The government should cultivate the view also among the propertyless classes of the population, those who are the most numerous and the least educated, that the state is not only an institution of necessity but also of welfare. By recognizable and direct advantages they must be led to look upon the state not as an agency devised solely for the protection of the better-situated classes of society but also as one serving their needs and interests.

The men of wealth who today are trying to prevent the regulation and control of their business in the interest of the public by the proper government authorities will not succeed, in my judgment, in checking the progress of the movement. But if they did succeed they would find that they had sown the wind and would surely reap the whirlwind, for they would ultimately provoke the violent excesses which accompany a reform coming by convulsion instead of by steady and natural growth.

Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.

The effect of a representative democracy is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation.

I'm not trying to top anything. I'm trying to be useful, to play a positive role, to serve the public interest.

Both of our political parties, at least the honest portion of them, agree conscientiously in the same object: the public good; but they differ essentially in what they deem the means of promoting that good. One side believes it best done by one composition of the governing powers, the other by a different one. One fears most the ignorance of the people; the other the selfishness of rulers independent of them. Which is right, time and experience will prove.

Municipal laws are a supply to the wisdom of each individual; and, at the same time, by restraining the natural liberty of men, make private interest submit to the interest of the public.

To serve the public interest is not the same as being a servant of public opinion.

No public interest is anything other or nobler than a massed accumulation of private interests.

The legislative job of the President is especially important to the people who have no special representatives to plead their cause before Congressand that includes the great majority. I sometimes express it by saying the President is the only lobbyist that one hundred and fifty million Americans have. The other twenty million are able to employ people to represent themand thats all right, its the exercise of the right of petitionbut someone has to look after the interests of the one hundred and fifty million that are left.

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.