Robert Byrd Quotes

As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past—to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority’s whims and the minority’s rights.

As long as there are only 3 to 4 people on the floor, the country is in good hands. It's only when you have 50 to 60 in the Senate that you want to be concerned.

Our Founding Fathers created the United States Senate for the purpose of protecting the rights of the minority.

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?

The Senate is a remarkable institution. It is unique. There is no other body, no other political body, no other democratic legislature in the world quite like the U.S. Senate.

One reason the Founding Fathers thought that states should have two senators was so that smaller states wouldn't get run over and could bring their interests to the attention of the Senate more broadly.

If a democracy is to remain real and stable, the majority must be humane and farsighted enough to take care of minorities who have serious objections to the majorities point of view and who, because of lack of numbers, do not have the political strength to impose their own policy solutions through their own political power.

Discussion is the bedrock of American democracy.

The freedom to persuade and suggest is the essence of the democratic process.

The people never have and never will be able to understand how the will of a majority of the House of Representatives can be set aside by the judgment of a few men on a powerful committee.

The filibuster is the most important check on raw Presidential power.

Eliminating the filibuster would eliminate the people’s voices in the Senate.

One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.

In a democracy, you can be right and still lose power.

Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.

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

Democracy is when the people keep a government in check.

The practical core of democracy, defined functionally, is the peaceful exchange of power between different groups of powerful political players arranged in parties.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

We are in a democracy, and I think for all issues, whatever matters that the opposition may have apprehension on, there is a forum, and it is called Parliament.

I do strongly believe myself that members of the government who sit in the House of Lords should be accountable to the elected House because otherwise there is a democratic deficit, and that is wrong.

There was a Republican majority of the Senate, and it tempered the nature of the nominations being made.

And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed.

A government of, by and for the people is obligated to conduct the nation's business in a manner that respects dissent.

Government is not a bottom line enterprise. You can get yourself elected ... but you can't fire the legislature if they won't do what you want.