David Hume Quotes

Devolution [decentralization of government] cannot stop at the State House. It must go down to City Hall.

Increased town size hurts real democracy in two ways. First… it dramatically reduces the percentage of citizens who attend town meetings. Second, town size increases the number of citizens who attend, which dramatically reduces the percentage of these attendees who participate.”

A town meeting is a legislature of citizens, for citizens, and by citizens. The fact that each citizen of the town is also a legislator separates the New England town meeting from all other forms of democracy.

This day I learned that the caucus club meets at certain times in the garret of Tom Dawes, the adjutant of the Boston regiment.... There they smoke tobacco till you cannot see from one end of the room to another. There they drink flip, I suppose, and there they choose a moderator who puts questions to the vote regularly; and selectmen, assessors, collectors, firewards, and representatives are regularly chosen before they are chosen in the town [of Boston].

It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or counsuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is a legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa.

Being mayor of San Francisco is dealing with pot holes and dog doo.

Street lights, dog-doo and parking meters are not my cup of tea.

The government of the cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States.

The more responsibility you can move toward local government, the better of you're going to be … City governments do better than their State governments in terms of accountability.

Our President is not a King, nor our senate a House of Lords.

The best reason why monarchy is a strong government is that it is an intelligible government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly anywhere in the world understand any other.

Where there is only a national representative government without local self-government, there is no liberty as we understand it

Tsarism represents an intermediate form between European monarchism and Asian despotism, being, possibly, closer to the latter of these two

Between a conservative republic and a constitutional monarchy there is merely a difference in form.

Quite as serious an error [of the French] is the failure to provide for local self-government. As this lies at the bottom of republican institutions, and should be, moreover, the first concern of democracy

In republics the executive must be strongest because everything conspires against it, while in monarchies the legislature must be strongest, because everything conspires in favour of the monarch

Mayors of cities have the political position to really change people’s lives.

I do not know which is the more preferable, a government composed of several members but sovereign in the country, or a government of a single man with several inferior administrations all having the attributes of constitutional power…. The present government succeeds in combining the worst of both systems by having a infinity of governments all endowed with constitutional laws and separate powers, so that departmental (provincial) councils dispute with the government and the towns and the communes.

I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true.

But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist many other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign governments still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.

We have states. And we have cities. And we have counties. And we have the private sector. And - and so the country still works even when Washington's dysfunctional.

Federal funding for cities who consider themselves sanctuary cities should be reduced.

Some countries have a parliamentary republic, some are presidential republics and some are still monarchies, but no one sees them as not being democratic. In some countries regional leaders are appointed from the centre and in others they are elected. In Russia, the president is elected through direct secret ballot, and in the United States, the president is elected through a system of electoral colleges.

There are two subjects, indeed, which I shall claim a right to further as long as I breathe: the public education, and the sub-division of counties into wards. I consider the continuance of republican government as absolutely hanging on these two hooks.

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.