Adrian Cronauer Quotes

The only legitimate right to govern is an express grant of power from the governed.

Government itself is founded upon the great doctrine of the consent of the governed, and has its cornerstone in the memorable principle that men are endowed with inalienable rights.

… the origin of all civil government, justly established, must be a voluntary compact, between the rulers and the ruled; and must be liable to such limitations, as are necessary for the security of the absolute rights of the latter; for what original title can any man or set of men have, to govern others, except their own consent?

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.

Our Constitution does not profess to have been established simply by the majority, but by 'the people' - the minority as much as the majority.

The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract.

God leaves to Man the choice of Forms in Government; and those who constitute one Form, may abrogate it.

Two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers gave us a democracy. It was based upon the simple, yet noble, idea that government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

The primary social contract between the people of the United States and their government - quaint though it might seem to even mention it at this point - is that ours is to be a government 'of the people, by the people, for the people.'

We've got in the habit of not really understanding how freedom was in the 19th century, the idea of government of the people in the 19th century. America commits itself to that in theory.

We have come from the divine right of kings to the divine right of the governed.

The deputies of the people should not and cannot be the people's representatives, they can only be its servants.... The moment that people give power to their representatives, they abdicate their liberty.

The will of the people makes governments legitimate.

Resolved-1st, That the People are the source of all legitimate power; and, That We are the People.

The authority of the people is a necessary foundation for a constitution

As for us BRITONS, thank Heaven, we have a better Sense of Government deliver’d to us from our Ancestors. We have the Notion of A PUBLIC and A CONSTITUTION; how a Legislative, and how an Executive is model’d.

Men are born free, that since they begin with no government, they must therefore institute government by voluntary agreement, and thus government must be their agent, not their superior.

The foundation of civil power lies in the people.

The source of the government's authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.

The constitution is a sacred document in a democracy.

Elected representatives are so embedded in the basic notion of what constitutes a democratic nation that it has become indistinguishable from any other form of democratic governance.

All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America.

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