Richard Hooker Quotes

The submission of free people to the executive authority of government, is no more than a compliance with laws which they themselves have enacted.

The touchstone of everything that can be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself.

Whatever the People has last ordained shall be held as binding by law.

ALL lawful authority, legislative, and executive, originates from the people. Power in the people is like light in the sun, native, original, inherent and unlimited by any thing human.

There is an original, undivided and incommunicable authority and supremacy in the collective body of the people, to whom all delegated power must submit, and from whom there is no appeal.

In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim - that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.

Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.

Public officers are the servants and agents of the people, to execute the laws which the people have made.

If we were left solely to the wordy wit of legislators in Congress for our guidance, uncorrected by the seasonal experience and the effectual complaints of the people, America would not long retain her rank among the nations.

The preservation of the laws was the sole reason which induced men to allow of, and to elect a superior; that is the true origin of sovereign power.

That government is, or ought to be instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; ... and that when any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and undefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.

That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all amenable to them.

… courts do not substitute their social and economic beliefs for the judgment of legislative bodies, who are elected to pass laws

The circumstances of the world are continually changing, and the opinions of man change also; and as government is for the living, and not for the dead, it is the living only that has any right in it.

I doubt the people of North Carolina will be content to allow the governor to decide or even unduly influence selecting their senator.

We don't go against the will of the people.

the main question seems to be how a commonwealth comes to be an empire of laws and not of men

Public opinion has become the public law

To the people belongs the power of approving or rejecting laws and, which is still of greater importance, peace and war are likewise fixed by their deliberations. When any alliance is concluded, any war ended, or treaty made; to them the conditions are referred, and by them either annulled or ratified. And thus again, from a view of all these circumstances, it might with reason be imagined, that the people had engrossed the largest portion of the government, and that the state was plainly a democracy.

It is a pretty bold stand for this people to take, to say that they will not be controlled by the corrupt administrators of our General Government. We will be controlled by them, if they will be controlled by the Constitution and laws; but they will not. Many of them do not care any more about the constitution and the laws that they make than they do about the laws of another nation.

The people, have chosen to be governed under such and such principles. They have not chosen to be governed or proposed to submit upon any other.

The general laws of the kingdom may be enacted only with the consent of the king and the nation. If the king proposes a law, the nation accepts or rejects it; if the nation demands a law, it is for the king to consent or to reject it

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.

What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections.

The will of the people... is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object