Government by Consent Quotes

Our basic rights declaring document: The Declaration of Independence.

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.

Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.

Peoples did not in the first instance originate from rulers, but whatever peoples desired to be ruled by a single monarch or by chief men elected by them were anterior to their rulers. Hence it follows that peoples were not created for the sake of rulers, but on the contrary the rulers for the sake of the people.

We are bound to maintain public liberty, and, by the example of our own systems, to convince the world that order and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be significant, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion.

The Declaration of Independence to which these great men affixed their signatures is much more than a political document. It constitutes a spiritual manifesto-revel ation, if you will-declaring not for this nation only, but for all nations, the source of man's rights.

Tell me if ever in history there was a government which was based exclusively upon the consent of the people, and which was ready to dispense altogether with the use of force. There has never been and never will be such a government.

Free nations are the best vehicle for expressing the will of the people. And America respects the right of all nations to chart their own path.

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

'All men are created equal', 'government by consent of the governed', 'give me liberty or give me death'. Well, those are not just clever words, or those are not just empty theories.

In making the great experiment of governing people by consent rather than by coercion, it is not sufficient that the party in power should have a majority. It is just as necessary that the party in power should never outrage the minority.

The Constitution was made for the people and not the people for the Constitution.

The authority of the people is a necessary foundation for a constitution

We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.