Eleanor Roosevelt Quotes

Whereas the constitution of … Holland is in its principles a popular representation, it is necessary that the right of the people be duly ascertained; that the members of the States be rendered responsible to them for their conduct and be precluded from taking any decisive step without their consent …

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.

I trust the American People more than American Institutions.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.

Upon you, fellow-citizens, as the representatives of the States and the people, is wisely devolved the legislative power.

We have been taught to regard a representative of the people as a sentinel on the watch-tower of liberty.

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.

Is it not natural that a man who is a candidate for the favor of the people, and who is dependant on the suffrages of his fellow-citizens for the continuation of his public honors, should take care to inform himself of their dispositions and inclinations…? This dependant [creates] strong chords of sympathy between the Representative and the constituent.

A government as good as the people.

Democracy is about aggregating the collective power of citizens to speak in their behalf.

Senators here were elected to the Senate and not to the caucus ... great questions of this sort should be debated in public and decided in public.

Are the governors such exceptionally gifted men as to enable them … to represent the masses and act in the interests of all men better than all men would be able to act for themselves?

The wisdom and discretion of Congress ... are the restraints on which the people must often rely solely, in all representative governments

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

When we ignore the will of the people, people lose.

As taxpayers, we pay our elected officials to serve the people and protect our state and our interests.

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

I enjoyed my stay in the Congress. Most people do not. And too many people who have been elected really don't understand the nature of government.

My primary motivation for running for the 9th Congressional District is that I strongly believe that one of the hallmarks of the American democracy is a representative form of democracy.

When a government for the people becomes a government in spite of the people, then who are we really serving?

I will run an open government that speaks with honesty, seeks opinion, listens to its citizens.

Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials.

The functions of these elders, therefore, determine the power of the people; for a representative is one chosen by others to do in their name what they are entitled to do in their own persons; or rather to exercise the powers which radically inhere in those for whom they act.