Political Representation Quotes

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.

Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently and for the same reason.

We won't organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out. Both of them have sold us out; both parties have sold us out. Both parties are racist, and the Democratic Party is more racist than the Republican Party.

I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard University.

As to those who have no landed property, ... the allowing them to vote for legislators is an impropriety.

We" are not the government; the government is not "us." The government does not in any accurate sense "represent" the majority of the people

The one endorsement that makes the most difference is from the constituents in the district.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

I want to see a public man come forward and say what the Irish question is ... Thus you have a starving population, an absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and in addition the weakest executive in the world ... That is the Irish question in its integrity.

All power is fast getting into the hands of the very lowest people.

It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted.

Political power is now widely diffused; and whatever may be the evils of democracy, this good has come of it, that it has forced men to open their eyes to the misery of the masses, and to inquire more zealously as to the possibility of a better distribution of wealth.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

We enter parliament in order to supply ourselves, in the arsenal of democracy, with its own weapons…. If democracy is so stupid as to give us free tickets and salaries for this … work, that is its affair.

How can you compare my life to any other MEP? I mean, come on, it's crackers, isn't it? Look, other MEPs do five days a week in Brussels and pop home for weekends. I'm working seven bloody days a week, all the hours God sends. If you include the socialising, it's over 100 hours a week.

Under universal suffrage the elected are those who know best how to take in the masses. The minority, which may happen to be the half minus one, is sacrificed.

Women are unfit for parliament and parliament is unfit for them.

People who are denied access to power are also denied the opportunity to make or influence decisions to live a better life out of poverty and claim their rights.

…I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races…nor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry

It was said that Chile was not ready to vote for a woman, it was traditionally a sexist country. In the end, the reverse happened: the fact of being a woman became a symbol of the process of cultural change the country was undergoing.

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.

I am free to confess that the exercise of that (Britain’s), authority is not perfectly constitutional in respect to the Colonies. We know that the whole landed interest of Britain is represented in that body (Parliament), while neither the land nor the people of America hold the least participation in the legislative authority of the State. Representation, or a participation in the supreme councils of the State, is the great principle upon which the freedom of the British Government is established and secured.

Corporations and special interests have their voice in Congress, and they have too many members scared of their power. What Congress needs is a progressive voice who is unafraid to take on these powerful interests - who is willing to fight for all Americans, not just the wealthiest 1 percent.

I have my own political views and ideologies, but will not enter politics for sure.