Citizen Consent Quotes

No government really rooted in parliamentary democracy should have the power to make its citizens fight and die in a war they may oppose, a war which even possibly may be wrong …

Whatever the People has last ordained shall be held as binding by law.

The chief magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the states [from the Union]. The people themselves can do this also if they choose; but the Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it.

Thirdly, the supreme power cannot take from any man any part of his property without his own consent: for the preservation of property being the end of government, and that for which men enter into society, it necessarily supposes and requires, that the people should have property, without which they must be supposed to lose that, by entering into society, which was the end for which they entered into it; too gross an absurdity for any man to own.

I believe that people have a right to decide their own destinies; people own themselves. I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a temporary license to exist, in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself. In a democracy, you own the government. It doesn't own you.

I haven't heard Obama ask us for our consent when he's trying to ram Obamacare down our throats.

The source of the government's authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

The confidence with which a Sovereign is invested, is solid only when it is sanctioned by the suffrages of the people, who clothed him with the supreme magistracy.

The sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of the people.

It is essential to the freedom and security of a free people, that no taxes be imposed upon them but by their own consent, or their representatives.

Whereas the constitution of … Holland is in its principles a popular representation, it is necessary that the right of the people be duly ascertained; that the members of the States be rendered responsible to them for their conduct and be precluded from taking any decisive step without their consent …