James Monroe Quotes

Sovereignty belongs unconditionally to the people.

Our sovereign, the people.

With the Germans, the sovereignty resided in the great assembly of the people.

In America, the people are not subjects of government, the government is subject to the people.

The people are, in fact, the fountain of all power.

The foundation of civil power lies in the people.

Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law.

The will of the people makes governments legitimate.

We must remember that the people do not belong to the government but that government belongs to the people.

All authority belongs to the people.

The people made this government, and not the government the people. Destroy the intelligence of the people, and the government could not exist for a day; — destroy this government, and the people would create another, and yet another, of no less perfect symmetry.

The Federal and State governments are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers and designed for different purposes…. The ultimate authority … resides in the people alone.

I have very little faith in the mass of constitutional republicans nor in the opinion of the mass of the people.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

The people are the government, administering it by their agents; they are the government, the sovereign power.

The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

The primary social contract between the people of the United States and their government - quaint though it might seem to even mention it at this point - is that ours is to be a government 'of the people, by the people, for the people.'

It should be remembered, as an axiom of eternal truth in politics, that whatever power in any government is independent, is absolute also; in theory only, at first, while the spirit of the people is up, but in practice, as fast as that relaxes. Independence can be trusted nowhere but with the people in mass.

We have come from the divine right of kings to the divine right of the governed.

If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of the matter.

The people are the masters.

Office holders are the agents of the people, not their masters.

In our system of government, nobody has the last word except the people.

In this country the government responds to the people, not the other way around.