We the People Quotes about government, democracy and citizens.

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Select a quote. Write an essay about how it reflects what you feel about current events or government.


Thomas Jefferson, 1812

- Robert M. Huchins

"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, and more selfish than bureaucracy. It denounces as public enemies, all who question it's methods or throw light upon it's crimes". - Abraham Lincoln

- Thomas Jefferson

Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men—and this is the greatest blessing of free governments. - Andrew Jackson


"The common people feel themselves oppressed by the grasping of some, and their vanity is flattered by others. Fired with evil passions, they are no longer willing to submit to control, but demand that everything be subject to their authority. The invariable result is that government assumes the noble names of free and popular, but becomes in fact the most execrable thing, mob rule."
- Polybius, 126 B.C.

- C.S. Lewis

- Alexis de Tocqueville

- Elbridge Gerry

- Edward Dowling

George Washington, 1787

- H.L. Mencken

- Alexander Hamilton

- John Adams

- Oscar Wilde

"The efforts of the government alone will never be enough. In the end the people must choose and the people must help themselves."
- John F. Kennedy

Not our location is important, but the direction in which we move.
Lev Tolstoy

Every person knows that he should do what unites, not divides, him and other people.
Lev Tolstoy

Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
Lev Tolstoy

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr

Lord Acton


In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction. Ludwig von Mises

Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
Ludwig von Mises

Those believing they have not voted are mistaken, for their indifference affects all our futures.
M.A. Denck


Mahatma Gandhi

There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations.
Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

Retaliation is counter-poison and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of Love alone can destroy the poison of hate.
Mahatma Gandhi

I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense.
Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy and violence can ill go together.
Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.
Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.
Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.
Mahatma Gandhi

The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.
Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

What you do is of little significance, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts - that is where the battle should be fought.
Mahatma Gandhi

Performance of one's duties should be independent of public opinion.
Mahatma Gandhi

The spirit of democracy cannot be superimposed from the outside. It must come from within.
Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy means: Sticking to the rules of the game, even when the referee is not looking.
Manfred Hausmann

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Margaret Mead

We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.
Mark Twain

Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

In actual fact those who do not care for politics and sit on the fence do indeed side for a political party: The ruling party.
Max Frisch

The dignity of man is in free choice.
Max Frisch

Any law which violates the indefeasible rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.
Maximilien Robespierre

Meg Greenfield


The Constitution, in a very significant sense, is not a mechanism for making decisions but preventing them.
Michael Gilson De Lomos

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Michel de Montaigne

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
Mignon McLaughlin

Mikhail Gorbachev

If you are called upon to govern humans, treat them humanely.
Mikhail Kalinin

In democracy its your vote that counts. In feudalism its your count that votes.
Mogens Jallberg

In democracy its your vote that counts.; In feudalism its your count that votes.
Mogens Jallberg


Whatever field of human activity one may take, only those trends that are in harmony with the needs of society show rapid progress.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky

Nikolai Dobrolyubov

Norman Cousins


Who's more foolish: the fool, or the fool who follows him?
Obi Wan Kenobi

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Otto Von Bismark

Traditions are never left in peace: they degenerate if they are not perfected.
P. A. Pavlenko

P.J. O’Rourke

Paulo Freire

The common people suffer when the powerful disagree.


Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.


Justice will only exist where those not effected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.

The history of any nation is not only a succession of events, but also a chain of ideas.
Pyotr Chaadayev

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
Ralph Nader

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy feeds on argument, on the discussion as to the right way forward. This is the reason why respecting the opinion of others belongs to democracy. Richard von Weizsacker

The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same.
Robert Anson Heinlein

We once worried that democracy could not survive if an undereducated populace knew too little. Now we worry if it can survive us knowing too much. Robert Bianco

Robert Byrne

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope...build(ing) a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert F. Kennedy

indifference, and under nourishment. Robert Hutchins

a great deal of discretion about what you do. Rudolf Giuliani

This means to foster democratic freedom. Rudolph Rummel

Violence is the last resource of the incompetence.
Salvor Hardin

He that accepts protection, stipulates obedience.
Samuel Johnson

Saul Bellow

Senator Soaper

Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves. - Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, British Prime Minister

The more corrupt the state, the numerous the laws.

Theodore H. White

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am.".
Theodore Parker

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.
Thomas A. Edison

Thomas Babington Macaulay

Thomas Henry Huxley

Unnecessary laws are not good laws, but traps for money.
Thomas Hobbes

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson


Thomas Jefferson

Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.
Thomas Jefferson


Thomas Jefferson

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard


A great war always creates more scoundrels than it kills.

Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.

When the government fears the people, that is LIBERTY. When people fear the government, that is TYRANNY.

When a nation's government becomes more fearful of its citizens' rights than protective of them,
that nation's future is only despotism and extinction.

He who fox-like got his rank, Is wolf-like in his office.
V. A. Zhukovsky

Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.
V. I. Lenin

Face the truth squarely. In politics that is always the best and the only correct attitude.
V. I. Lenin

False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction.
V. I. Lenin

Honesty in politics is the result of strength; hypocrisy is the result of weakness. - V. I. Lenin

Our idea is that a state is strong when the people are politically conscious. It is strong when the people know everything,
can form an opinion of everything, and do everything consciously. - V. I. Lenin

Don't be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully,
and more systematically what you have done badly V. I. Lenin

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.
Newt Gingrich

Newt Gingrich

Life teaches none but those who study it.
V. O. Kliuchevsky

The right to be respected is won by respecting others.
Vassily Sukhomlinsky

I am strongly convinced that the people or society is the best and the most unerring critic.
Vissarion Belinsky

Democracy is when you are not closed for being open. - Vlada Bulatovitch

A great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady.

We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority,
people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. -
Walter Lippman

Walter Lippmann

Walter Winchell

Political elections do not choose leaders of society. Rather, they are an exercise in which groups of people choose individuals who will assist them in looting other groups of individuals. - William Anderson

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry. -
William F. Buckley

The real difference between the United States and other nations lies not in the words of the preamble to the Constitution, but in the fact that the substantive clauses of that Constitution are enforced by individuals independent of and not beholden to the elected branches.
Harold H. Greene

William Penn

William Pitt

A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot.
William Randolph Hearst

Winston Churchill


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Updated 9/2006 by Cynthia J. O'Hora