Gilbert M. Hitchcock Quotes

The Senate floor is and always has been the great arena of our democracy. I spent eight years in my younger life as a boxer, and sometimes when I enter the chamber, I think, 'This is the ring. The American people can see us here and listen to our arguments. This is where the fights matter.'

We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons…. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this … work, that is its affair.

The great constitutional corrective in the hands of the people against usurpation of power, or corruption by their agents is the right of suffrage; and this when used with calmness and deliberation will prove strong enough.

Legislatures represent people, not acres or trees.

Our laws to be wholesome need not be enacted in a palace.

The people have the right to know what their Agents are doing or have done, and it should not be in the option of the Legislature to conceal their proceedings.

You change laws by changing lawmakers.

Public participation in the process of government is the essence of democracy.

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.

Public business in the United State Senate should be done in the public.

We don’t trust government, but we need government….Government didn’t land here from Mars. We elected them.

As for transparency of our proceedings everyone is free to contact their government and find out what issues are being discussed.

… once you acknowledge the fact that Congress is after all made up of citizens elected to represent all of us, you must have some faith in their framing common sense laws.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

Somebody is going to be making the laws for this entire country. It could be you. Will it be you?

I feel lucky that I get the privilege of serving in the Senate.

Parliament's job is to conduct discussions. But many a time, Parliament is used to ignore issues, and in such situations, obstruction of Parliament is in the favour of democracy. Therefore, parliamentary obstruction is not undemocratic.

Americans need to be engaged and invested in the legislative process that affects their daily lives, otherwise we are just democracy in name only.

How can we even call this a Democracy when the House, the Senate, the White House, and now the Supreme Court are all controlled by the representatives of a minority group in America?

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.

If I want to make political decisions, I should stand for election. If I want to do something in the legal field, that's different; that is my - they are my qualifications, but you know, the politicians are the ones who stand up there and are answerable to the people.

A State which has universal suffrage and a wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the people by education to rightly exercise the great powers with which they are invested.

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.

In a democracy, citizens pass judgment on their government, and if they are kept in the dark about what their government is doing, they cannot be in a position to make well-grounded decisions.

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.