Alan Siegel Quotes

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

If certain selected bodies of men, deputed on these principles, determine contrary to the wishes and expectations of their constituents, the people have an undoubted right to reject their decisions, to call for a revision of their conduct, to depute others in their room, or if they think proper, to demand further time for deliberation on matters of the greatest moment: …

Part of the problem you have is that you don't have a dialogue between elected officials and their constituents. They've built these barricades, these barriers around themselves and tried to avoid interaction with their constituents.

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

The value of government to the people it serves is in direct relationship to the interest citizens themselves display in the affairs of state.

I mean those people who are interested in good government will certainly contribute in order to make certain there's some counter-balance to those whose interests in good government is less.

Trumpeting the importance of voting deludes people into thinking that they have a leash on the government.

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.

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

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 …

When our Founders created this great experiment in self-governance, the House of Representatives became, by design, the body closest to the people. We are the most accountable, and we must be the most transparent.

As elected officials, we were sent to the halls of government by our neighbors to do their work - and much work needs to be done. Remembering our shared experiences with the people we represent makes us better and more accountable civil servants.

Congress is where Americans are supposed to have our big, messy political fights. That's because the people who make the laws need to be hired and fired by the people. Don't like the laws? Fire the lawmakers.

We the people tell the government what to do, it doesn't tell us.

We're going to make sure that the people who run for office and get elected are the ones who are going to work for the American people.

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

Unless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measuresby results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice.

As long as the government's actions are secret, it cannot be held accountable. A government for the people and by the people should be transparent to the people.

A government or a party gets the people it deserves and sooner or later a people gets the government it deserves.

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.

If there’s not a good feedback loop from the people to the government, and if you have rule of the bureaucrat — if the bureaucracy is in charge, then what meaning does democracy actually have? If the people cannot vote and have their will be decided by their elected representatives in the form of the president and the Senate and the House, then we don’t live in a democracy. We live in a bureaucracy.

The people of Zimbabwe have a responsibility to ensure that the government that they elected behaves properly.

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.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.