Henry David Thoreau Quotes

I think good governance and good politics can go together.

When all Americans believe that the people we elect deserve to be in power, that their conduct in office is worthy of respect, and that they can be held accountable for their decisions, our politics will finally be worthy of our great people.

Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.

A government of, for and by the people, requires much from the people.

The people are certainly the best judges whether they are well governed.

It is a democratic fallacy to believe that people want to govern themselves. People only ask to be governed decently.

In democracies the people seem to act as they please.

Choose the manager of your government as you would the manager of your private business.

Our democracy... is only as good as the American people demand it should be.

If you believe in democracy, the overreach of leaders is a good reminder that vigorous public debate and time-consuming due process are not only more fair and more just, but that over the long term they usually produce better government, too.

I actually find that Canadians are incredibly interested in democracy, and alarmed when they realize that the Prime Minister's Office is controlling virtually everything that goes on within the federal government.

Government must not supersede the will of the people or the responsibilities of the people. The function of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

Democracy, disciplined and enlightened, is the finest thing in the world.

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening, foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us

No one can deny that some Islamist groups have credential and popularity. But that does not mean they are a majority. If we are serious about democracy we cannot blame the people for choosing what they want. We must promote the kinds of procedures and processes that are helping the people move ahead.

A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.

But are we even capable of maintaining a Republic anymore? Are there enough citizens willing to do the hard work that self-rule requires, or have we become a people who would rather be cared for, fed, clothed, housed, and told what's best for us by a parentlike state? Unfortunately, the evidence suggests the latter.

Our government is based on the belief that a people can be both strong and free, that civilized men need no restraint but that imposed by themselves against abuse of freedom.

No government can continue good, but under the control of the people.

The matter of who governs Zimbabwe is a matter that is in the hands of the people of Zimbabwe. The matter of who governs the people of South Africa is in the hands of the people of South Africa.

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them.

No government demands so much from the citizens as democracy and none gives back so much.

One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests.... The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, "Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.

Democracy demands that little men should not take big ones too seriously; it dies when it is full of little men who think they are big themselves.

Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn't Them: It's us.