Rick Perlstein Quotes

Our democracy is predicated on the belief that our government should be accessible by the people. We cannot allow ourselves to give in to fear or shy away from interacting with the public.

Although elections are not perfect tools for democracy, they reinforce the relationship between the people and their leaders, empowering citizens to remove and replace their governments in a peaceful and orderly manner. The only basis for a peaceful society is providing people with the opportunity to express their opinions and their will, and elections are instrumental in doing so.

Remember, the Congress doesn't get as many opportunities to make an impression with the public.

I think the American people should express their preferences, and we'll accept their choice.

When political and business leaders tell the public - any public - 'We don't trust you to make the right decision' - they prejudice that electorate against the very proposals they want it to accept and undermine public confidence in themselves.

And in Canada we, you know, it costs us three or $400 million to have an election. You know, it's always been my position that we shouldn't complain about that; that's the price of admission for a living in a great democracy.

Canadians want to elect good people to be their voice in Ottawa.

Voters must have faith in the electoral process for our democracy to succeed.

Everybody has a say, everybody has a voice, because everyone that comes to the House had about 750,000 people they're representing. And you want those voices heard.

I am a relatively new Member to this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic process.

Having principled men and women in office is how you protect yourself from tyranny, and that was something I learned from when I was 2, 3, 5 years old.

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.

The people's government has come to be less and less the people's business.

This is one of the finest expressions of U. S. democracy at work.

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

The essential thing is the formation of the public will of the nation. That is the starting point for political action.

In Russia we are not fighting to win elections. We are fighting to have elections.

People do not dislike their local government, but they do think it could do better.

We are a democracy and I will go with the 51 percent wherever that leads us.

American democracy depends on the public's ability to remain accurately informed on our state of affairs.

Voting is the only way to make change in a democracy.

To some degree it matters who's in office, but it matters more how much pressure they're under from the public.

Democracy only has substance if there's the rule of law. That is, if people believe that the votes are going to be counted, and they are counted. If they believe that there's a judiciary out there that will make sense of things if there's some challenge. If there isn't rule of law, people will be afraid to vote the way they want to vote.

Our democracy works because the parties air and debate their differences in public.

Obviously, people feeling that their government is responsive to them is in the best interest of the United States. It's in the best interest of the U.K., it's in the best interest of countries all over the world.