Amit Shah Quotes

This leads to a question - if a great many people are for a certain project, is it necessarily right? If the vast majority is for it, is it even more certainly right? This, to be sure, is one of the tricky points of democracy. The minority often turns out to be right, and though one believes in the efficacy of the democratic process, one has also to recognize that the demand of the many for a particular project at a particular time may mean only disaster.

No minister ever stood, or could stand, against public opinion.

Democratic leaders, whose power is ultimately dependent on popular support, are held accountable for failing to improve the lives of their citizens. Therefore, they have a powerful incentive to keep their societies peaceful and prosperous.

I have popular support.

A government is not legitimate merely because it exists.

We've had Town Hall meetings, we've witnessed election after election, in which the American people have taken a position on the President's health care bill. And the bottom line is the people don't like this bill. They don't want it.

These days there are not enough of such intermediary groups, between the state and the individual, with the result that political leaders are often unduly guided by opinion polls.

The people's government has come to be less and less the people's business.

Legitimacy [of governments] is not bought by force; it is earned by the consensus of the people.

It is a duty of those entrusted with the administration of their affairs to conform themselves to the decided choice of their constituents.

Roosevelt knew never to lose control of the majority of American opinion, unlike his greatest democratic contemporaries, Churchill and De Gaulle, who at times suffered spectacular rejections by their electorates.

Roosevelt understood that democracy requires persuasion and consent

No president … has ever quarreled with Congress as a whole, or with either chamber, without being backed by the people. The great body of voters hate what they regard as an unequal fight, and may always be trusted to side with the one man as against the many; with the public servant whom they have jointly elected, as against any number of public servants chosen to represent fractional parts of the Union.

In a political sense, there is one problem that underlies all of the others. The problem is making government sufficiently responsive to the people.

In order to continue in office, any government (not simply a 'democratic' government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature.

You have to be ready for anything. It's a good reminder about democracy. Voters can tell you to carry on, or chuck you out. You've got to be ready for both.

Only the public that elected me can dismiss me.

Any person should have enough sense to know that a PM should have public support. Numbers should be with them.

The Catalan institutions and political parties have to be consistent, because they have the democratic legitimacy of the ballot box and they can't pass certain responsibilities on to civil society.

When we ignore the will of the people, people lose.

The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account

This Government, the offspring of your own choice, uninfluenced and unawed, adopted upon full investigation and mature deliberation, completely free in its principles, in the distribution of its powers, uniting security with energy, and containing within itself a provision for its own amendment, has a just claim to your confidence and your support.

The will of the people is the best law.

Opposition can be useful. Every opposition movement is good and useful if it acts within the law... If there are people who act outside the law, then the state must use legal means to impose law in the interests of the majority. That's the way it's done in the U.S. and that's the way it's done in Russia.

I would like to see transparency become the default for the American government: Abolish the Freedom of Information Act so we don't have to ask government for information but government must ask to keep information from us. The more transparent government is, the more collaborative it can become. The more our officials learn to trust us - with information and a role in government - the more we can trust them.