Thomas Jefferson Quotes

We want the government to be controlled by all the people, not by the richest 1%. That's always been the first demand. That's a simple enough message, and I think it's pretty clear now, even though much of the media has been disingenuous in its coverage. We don't want the heads of the biggest industries to make all the decisions, because they're not for the people. They're for the corporations. Power to the people!

Democracy is not a good that people can enjoy without trouble. It is, on the contrary, a treasure that must be daily defended and conquered anew by strenuous effort.

The best way of preventing the army from confiscating power for itself and for itself alone is to make this power shared by the Voltaic people from the outset. That's what we are aiming for.

Transparency in government, no less than transparency in choosing government, remains a vital national interest in a democracy.

Democracy is a system where people are counted not weighed.

Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.

The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account

I cannot believe that a republic could subsist if the influence of the lawyers in public business did not increase in proportion to the power of the people.

Even if you assume presidents were democratically elected they still have no right to keep secrets from the American people.

If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.

If you want to be free, or you want to preserve freedom for people, you both need to have laws that make it so people have freedom of speech and all the freedoms that they need. You also need to have an open governance system where people can vote and people have representation.

If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave.

One cannot have a trade union or a democratic election without freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby people choose and remove their rulers, there is no method of securing human rights against the state. No democracy without human rights, no human rights without democracy, and no trade union rights without either. That is our belief; that is our creed.

People need security of the mind. Why do they want democracy? Because it can give them freedom and security in a balanced way.

The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.

In a political sense, there is one problem that currently underlies all of the others. That problem is making Government sufficiently responsive to the people. If we don't make government responsive to the people, we don't make it believable. And we must make government believable if we are to have a functioning democracy.

Freedom and democracy, That's the word from Washington every day. Put America to sleep with warm milk and clichés, And people are expendable along the way.

The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

Freedom exists only where the people take care of the government.

The Russian people deserve free and fair elections. They deserve to have a democracy.

The government of our great country belongs to all of the people and not just a handful of the wealthy.

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.

You can't afford to hate politics. The politics of this country is democracy. Democracy is by the people, of the people and for the people. The day people stop taking active part in the politics of this country, democracy will not survive.

Democracy demands that elected members be able to realize fully the role for which they have been chosen.

I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.