Rufus Choate Quotes

The masses are our masters; and for every one who looks facts in the face his existence has become dependent on them, so that the thought of them must control his doings, his cares, and his duties.

Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.

Politicians are there to try to deal with stuff, but sometimes it's both fortunate and unfortunate that people like us have more... not involvement, but more power in the stuff that we say.

There is a power in public opinion in this country - and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers - which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.

As a businessperson, I don't have the power to change the government. That is in the hands of the political leaders. However, as a taxpayer, we have the right to be critical of the government and demand change.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.

The will of the people makes governments legitimate.

Towering over Presidents and State Governors, over Congress and State Legislatures, over conventions and the vast machinery of party, public opinion stands out in the United States, as the great source of Power.

[Describing America:] Public opinion, which is there omnipotent, is generally right in its aims ...

How many fools does it take to make up a public?

The government is just the people acting together.

Democracy is about aggregating the collective power of citizens to speak in their behalf.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Opinion and protest are the life breath of democracy—even when it blows heavy.

In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

No policy that does not rest upon philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

Acting upon everybody for 30 minutes in 24 hours, the press is asked to create a mystical force called Public Opinion that will take up the slack in public institutions. The press has often mistakenly pretended that it could do just that.

It is not possible to assume that a world carried on by division of labor and authority, can be governed by universal opinions in the whole population.

Public opinion has become the public law

When we talk about the Constitution of the United States, we are sometimes apt to quote—"Vox populi, vox Dei;" that is, The voice of the people is the voice of God. But in some places they ought to say, VOX POPULI, VOX DIABOLI; that is, the voice of the people is the voice of the Devil.

Critics intend on changing the balance of public opinion and of political power.

Roosevelt understood that democracy requires persuasion and consent