Walter Lippmann Quotes

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

If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require.

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.

In our form of democracy the expression of the popular will can be effected only through the instrumentality of political parties.

Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change the government practically just so much.

The greater the share the people have in government, the less liberty, civil or religious, does a nation enjoy.

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.

A silent majority and government by the people is incompatible.

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.

A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

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.

People want the government to go back to the people.

The further the departure from direct and constant control by the citizens, the less has the government of the ingredient of republicanism.

The Government is a servant and never should be anything but a servant. The moment the people become adjuncts to government, then the law of retribution begins to work, for such a relation is unnatural, immoral, and inhuman.

I do think that all politicians today have to be more attentive to people wanting to be heard, wanting to have more control over their lives.

We have moved from an age in which government leaders sought to do what was best for the people to one in which the political leadership is convinced it knows what is best for the people, whether they like it or not.

The throne we honour is the people's choice.

The government is supposed to respond to the will of the people. Not dictate to the people what they are doing.

I am always suspicious of the formulation that "politics" has prevented a great idea from being enacted by government. Politics IS government, in a democratic society. It's a challenge for school reformers, like reformers in any realm, to build a popular constituency for their work. If the people it's supposed to benefit vote against it, that tells me that the person pushing reform lacks political skill. And political skill is a good thing.

The best type of government comes from a government that is scrutinized by the people when they have true information about our governments, major corporations, other power actors in society.

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

The passions, therefore, not the reason, of the public would sit in judgment. But it is the reason, alone, of the public, that ought to control and regulate the government. The passions ought to be controlled and regulated by the government.

The will of the people shall be the law of the land