Robert Caro Quotes

Wherever you have votes, you have power.

The ballot box is a license to govern, not a mandate to rule.

The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough.

The people who own the country ought to govern it.

Public participation in the process of government is the essence of democracy.

Democracy cannot be imagined without Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha, and they cannot be imagined without MPs and MLAs.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

A State which has universal suffrage and a wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the people by education to rightly exercise the great powers with which they are invested.

The ballot box is the surest arbiter of disputes among free men.

To lead a country, you must periodically hold a national consultation in which people representing different programmes can make a bid for power.

We love the ability of the people to influence the actions of decision-makers, of lawmakers and presidents to be removed from or elevated to office by the will of voters, and of the community to connect amongst diverse populations through the ballot box.

You must see the persons who are in charge - persons you can punish or vote for.

Voting is the first duty of democracy.

Elections are the means we use to establish the will of the people in order to assure the rule of the people.

The great advantage of representatives is their capacity of discussing public affairs. For this, the people collectively are extremely unfit, which is one of the chief inconveniences of a democracy.

Give all of the governed a voice in their government; that and that alone is self government.

If we could, somehow, get a vote of the people of Tennessee and have it result properly, it would be worth more to us than a battle gained. How long before we can get such a vote?

The king, in possession of the throne, was the sole representative of sovereignty, the sole representative of power. Not so in a Republic … Here we have no sole representative of power. The ballot box is the instrumentality through which the sovereign power is exercised.

Your vote is your voice.

The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage…

The essential democracy of our Nation and the safety of our people depend not upon the absence of power, but upon lodging it with those whom the people can change or continue at stated intervals through an honest and free system of elections

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.

Liberal democracies have their own means of holding leaders accountable. They are called elections.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.