Adlai Stevenson I Quotes

It is unfortunate that people believe that in order to democratise something you have to get politicians out of the system.

There is nothing in our government that the ballot cannot remove or amend. It can make and unmake presidents and congresses and courts.... It can sweep over trusts, syndicates, corporations, monopolies and every other development of the money power.

We all know that in democracies, some of these [necessary] reforms are unpopular.

I'm the one who initiated the democratic process.

I have a lot of hope for the Constituent Assembly.

Voting should be the right of the great body of the society…an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

The actual rulers in a parliamentary democracy are the class of professional politicians. In theory, they are supposed to represent the people, but in fact they rule over them.

It is given to Bristol in this election to wrench the parliamentary system away from its feudal origins, and pitchfork it kicking and screaming into the twentieth century.

A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns: not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods.

Give all of the governed a voice in their government; that and that alone is self government.

There once was a time when people chose their congressmen. Now congressmen choose their people.

American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt: The same thing is true in England and the same in France; but in all these three countries the dominating fact is that whatever the people get ready to change the government, they can change it. The same thing is not true of Germany

I believe that the decisions which govern all our lives, the laws we must all obey, and the taxes we must all pay should be decided by people we choose and who we can throw out if we want change.

I enjoyed Parliament being a proper elected MP.

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.

Elected representatives are so embedded in the basic notion of what constitutes a democratic nation that it has become indistinguishable from any other form of democratic governance.

All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.

There are ways to pursue political change. In a democracy, it's through the ballot box. There are other ways, and many democracies have many different systems of democracy.

We need to remind our core supporters that we have not forgotten their concern with the way our democracy is being replaced by European bureaucracy in so many areas.

It's time for an American comeback... where leaders in Washington listen to 'we the people.'

The American public should simply accept no distractions. In our democracy, it is our duty to hold our elected leaders accountable. We do it at the ballot box.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

The right of election is the very essence of the constitution.

Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.

Voting is the foundational act that breathes life into the principle of the consent of the governed.