Lawrence Lessig Quotes

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

I do not want to abandon representative democracy. I want to see it balanced by popular sovereignty, especially the variety known as deliberative democracy.

We have an electronic democracy.

The government is just us.

Democracy, in brief, requires government by parties because the citizens are too numerous, too ill-informed and too preoccupied to come together spontaneously to choose the policies and leaders they wish to prevail. Political machinery has to be worked. The parties work it.

… in order to emerge from a state of nullity, the [Dutch] bourgeois are asking to take part in government; the most extreme among them wish to participate in all deliberations on public matters …. The more moderate ask only to elect their regents and to have representatives to watch over the maintenance of their rights …

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.

Citizens do not just make up and preserve a Republic; they are its ultimate stakeholders and in fact pillars.

I actually don't believe in governance by referendum. I believe that we have a democracy, that we elect people to make decisions.

I don't support direct democracy because I want a life, and that means I want to select people who work for me who do that sort of work for me.

One of the notable aspects of the democratic process is that one need not know anything about a subject in order to pass laws about it.

It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote.

Well, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.

Referendums are a democratic instrument, but so are decisions reached in a parliamentary democracy. I advise extreme caution when it comes to referendums. In Germany too.

Since James Madison day (and long before), there have been constant struggles over "democratic governance".

I have come to the conclusion that politics are too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.

The Paris Commune was first and foremost a democracy. The government was a body elected by universal suffrage.

Voting is the foundational act that breathes life into the principle of the consent of the governed.

The people must know that from this day on, we want their opinions.

Representative government demands an ongoing conversation between legislators and constituents.

A short exposure to the convention convinced me that the Internet may save the Democracy in that it is a way for the people, for the citizens, to have some direct influence on the government.

The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you want to go towards democracy, the first thing is to involve the people in decision making, not to make it.

All we have is our vote. But it's powerful.

Trumpeting the importance of voting deludes people into thinking that they have a leash on the government.