Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

Government is not infallible. Government is only an executive control, a centralized authority for the purpose of expressing the will of the people; before you have a government you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government. The government must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people.

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.

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

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.

War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

My government will respect the will of the people.

Representative government demands an ongoing conversation between legislators and constituents.

Our government has become a system rather than a living expression of the popular will.

Look, the people will elect the government they think best.

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.

Government of the people by the people and for the people cannot be conducted at the bidding of one man, however great he may be.

We may say with truth and meaning, that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights and especially that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient.

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

Almost all the worlds' constitutions are documents in which governments tell the people what their privileges are. Our Constitution is a document in which We the People tell the government what it is allowed to do. We the People are free.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.

Lincoln's reference to government of the people, by the people, for the people is a generally satisfactory definition of democracy. I say generally because when it comes to fair and workable details, democracy fails to completely meet the criteria enunciated by Lincoln by a rather wide margin.

In our democracy officers of the government are the servants, and never the masters of the people.

The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them.

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

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.

Most of us think of government as them. Yet government isn't Them: It's us.

I am confident that you brothers in parliament will champion the will of the people over that of the occupier.

All of us should remember that the federal government is not some mysterious institution comprised of buildings, files and paper. The people are the government. What we create we ought to be able to control.

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