Government by the People Quotes

Democracy means free television, not good television, but free.

If judges were just secret legislators, declaring not what the law is but what they would like it to be, the very idea of a government by the people and for the people would be at risk. And those who came to court would live in fear, never sure exactly what governs them except the judge’s will. As Alexander Hamilton explained, "liberty can have nothing to fear from” judges who apply the law, but liberty "ha[s] every thing to fear" if judges try to legislate too.

The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.

The very first words that we, the American nation, spoke were right here in Philadelphia. You know those words: "We the people." It wasn't, "We the conglomerates." It wasn't, "We the corporations." It was, "We the people."

The Declaration of Independence was always our vision of who we wanted to be, our ideal of freedom and justice, how we were going to be different, and what the American experiment was going to be about.

Democracy has many definitions, but what's in it for me is not an element of any of them.

First there is the democratic idea: that all men are endowed by their creator with certain natural rights; that these rights are alienable only by the possessor thereof; that they are equal in men; that government is to organize these natural, unalienable and equal rights into institutions designed for the good of the governed, and therefore government is to be of all the people, by all the people, and for all the people. Here government is development, not exploitation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident …

Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth.

Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible

[T]he only thing wrong with Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was that it was the South, not the North, that was fighting for a government of the people, by the people and for the people.

The primary social contract between the people of the United States and their government - quaint though it might seem to even mention it at this point - is that ours is to be a government 'of the people, by the people, for the people.'

It is contended by many that ours is a Christian government, founded upon the Bible, and that all who look upon the book as false or foolish are destroying the foundation of our country. The truth is, our government is not founded upon the rights of gods, but upon the rights of men. Our Constitution was framed, not to declare and uphold the deity of Christ, but the sacredness of humanity. Ours is the first government made by the people and for the people. It is the only nation with which the gods have had nothing to do.

The question of primary elections is one of government for the people and by the people. Under our system of government by political parties, two elements, equal in importance, are involved in the exercise of suffrage; one, the making of the ballot; the other, the casting of the ballot. The right to cast the ballot is regarded as sacred. The right to make the ballot is equally sacred. No man would be willing to delegate his power to vote the ballot at general elections. No man shall be compelled to delegate his power to make his ballot.

The words of the Declaration of Independence, as given effect by Washington...are to be accepted as real, and not as empty phrases...that in very truth this is a government by the people themselves, that the Constitution is theirs, that the courts are theirs, that all the government agents and agencies are theirs... It is for the people themselves finally to decide all questions of public policy and to have their decision made effective...We here, in America, hold in our hands the hope of the world.

I think that America has to stand with democracy.

The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

If you ever doubt that the people are the boss in a democracy, run for office. Even the President is a hired hand.

There is what I call the American idea. I so name it, because it seems to me to lie at the basis of all our truly original, distinctive, and American institutions. It is itself a complex idea, composed of three subordinate and more simple ideas, namely: The idea that all men have unalienable rights; that in respect thereof, all men are created equal; and that government is to be established and sustained for the purpose of giving every man an opportunity for the enjoyment and development of all these unalienable rights. This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom.

The core idea that underlies all of our democratic states, the core political idea, is this idea that it's not that one person is the sovereign; it's that all of the people are sovereign.

Democracy means that when there's a knock in the door at 3 am, it's probably the milkman.

Although The Declaration of Independence is not, like The Constitution, the law of the land, it is certainly the spirit of the land.

Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful stroke!

In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we've been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.