political consent Quotes

The function of a bourgeois democracy is to secure the consent of the masses to their own exploitation and oppression.

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

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.

Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed.... Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone.

The Assad regime has lost the consent of the governed, and it is difficult to see how a replacement Alawite regime would be able to regain this consent.

Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

Governments rest on the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish them at will whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.

If government be founded in the consent of the people, it can have no power over any individual by whom that consent is refused.

Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

The authority of government . . . can have no pure right over my person and property but what I concede to it.

Universal silence is taken to imply the consent of the people.

I defy anyone - and I have said this to the Germans - to build a solid, articulated, and viable Europe without France's consent.

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.