Quotes & Sayings About Representative Government

And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint. — Jon Stewart

We have too much legislating by clamor, by tumult, by pressure. Representative government ceases when outside influence of any kind is substituted for the judgment of the representative. — Calvin Coolidge

The only result of our present system - unless we reverse the drift - must be the gradual extension of the fascist sector and the gradual disappearance of the system of free enterprise under a free representative government. — John T. Flynn

Ultimately our problems will not be solved by the right man (or woman) in the White House. It simply doesn't work that way. We live in a democracy, a representative form of government, where it's as much if not more our responsibility to love and take care of our neighbors than our politician's responsibility. Real and lasting change comes from knowing and loving the folks who live in the houses that sit next to ours rather than saving all of our longing and hope for the voting booth...Our ultimate hope is not in politicians or powers or governments, but in a day coming when all things will be made right. And our ultimate concern isn't success but faithfulness. — Derek Webb

Aristotle believed democracy could exist only because of slavery, which gave citizens the leisure for higher pursuits. (Modern versions of this argument held that American democracy was born of the slave society of rural Virginia, because slavery gave men like Washington and Jefferson the free time to better themselves and to participate in representative government.) — Tom Reiss

The wreckage of representative government is strewn with broken promises. — Herbert Hoover

There is a flaw in the operation of representative government. The flaw produces the growth of government. — Allan H. Meltzer

The institution of representative government to us seems an essential part of democracy, but the ancients never thought of it. Its immense merit was that it enabled a large constituency to exert indirect power, and thus made possible the distribution of political responsibility throughout the great states of modern times. — Bertrand Russell

But the point is: On the right, they're pretending that our "truthfulness" is what's really important to them. Which, ironically, is not true. What matters to them is discrediting anything that they believe harms their side. That is their prime directive. And unlike Kirk, they fuckin' stick with it. They don't just drop the protocol any time they feel like humping a green girl in a unitard. [video clip of Captain Kirk, pursuing a green girl in a unitard]

And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint.
~ Jon Stewart — Chris Smith

I believe that it is my duty and your duty to teach our children concerning this great God-inspired Constitution, this great law of liberty which he has given to this world, and which was never given before to any nation in any land. Never before has there been a representative government of this kind. Republics have been tried, hundreds of times, thousands of years ago, but never was there anything like this Government. — Charles W. Nibley

Even if they were willing to let you remove your Pride from the council's collective influence - and they won't be - there's a reason the council exists. We band together because there's strength in numbers. Because in its unperverted state, the council ensures representative government and a pooling of resources and ideas that benefits everyone."
"Yes, but the operative word there is unperverted, and right now, you guys are operating under the thumb of the biggest power-pervert ever to swish his tail in the U.S. He's like Hitler with fur. — Rachel Vincent

Like representative government, soccer has been imported from England and democratized in the United States. It has become the great social and athletic equalizer for suburban America. From kindergarten, girls are placed on equal footing with boys. In the fall, weekend soccer games are a prevalent in suburbia as yard sales. Girls have their own leagues, or they play with boys, and they suffer from no tradition that says that women will grow up professionally to be less successful than men.

'In the United States, not only are girls on equal footing, but the perception now is that American women can be better than American men,' said Donna Shalala, the Secretary of Health and Human Services. 'That's a turning point, a huge breakthrough in perception. — Jere Longman

The theory behind representative government is that superior men-or at least men not inferior to the average in ability and integrity-are chosen to manage the public business, and that they carry on this work with reasonable intelligence and honest. There is little support for that theory in known facts ... — H.L. Mencken

The digital revolution has deepened the crisis within representative democracy. But as it forces its demise, it might also dictate its future. Traditional representative democracy within nations is no longer enough. People want more participation and collaboration with their government. — Eduardo Paes

We no longer have a government of, by, and for the people - representative democracy. We have government by plutocracy - the rule of the rich for the rich by the rich," Moyers — Thom Hartmann

Historically, it is traditional and habitual for us to be inadequately prepared. This is the combined result of a number factors, the character of which is only indicated: democracy, which tends to make everyone believe that he knows it all; the preponderance, inherent in democracy, of people whose real interest is in their own welfare as individuals; the glorification of our own victories in war and the corresponding ignorance of our defeats - and disgraces - and of their basic causes; the inability of the average individual to understand the cause and effect not only in foreign but domestic affairs, as well as his lack of interest in such matters. Added to these elements is the manner in which our representative form of government has developed as to put a premium on mediocrity and to emphasize the defects of the electorate already mentioned — Ernest J. King

In its exterior relations - abroad - this government is the sole and exclusive representative of the united majesty, sovereignty, and power of the States, constituting this great and glorious Union. To the rest of the world, we are one. Neither State nor State government is known beyond our borders. Within, it is different. — John C. Calhoun

It's harder to end a war than begin one. Indeed, everything that American troops have done in Iraq
all the fighting and all the dying, the bleeding and the building, and the training and the partnering
all of it has led to this moment of success. Now, Iraq is not a perfect place. It has many challenges ahead. But we're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people. We're building a new partnership between our nations. — Barack Obama

By the end of the eighteenth century it had become clear that none of the estates or classes in the various countries was willing or able to become the new ruling class, that is to identify itself with the government as the nobility had done for centuries.8 The failure of the absolute monarchy to find a substitute within society led to the full development of the nation-state and its claim to be above all classes, completely independent of society and its particular interests, the true and only representative of the nation as a whole. — Hannah Arendt

The government [...] cannot be anything other than the organization of a minority. It is the aim of this minority to impose upon the rest of society a 'legal order', which is the outcome of the exigencies of dominion and of the exploitation of the mass of helots effected by the ruling minority, and can never be truly representative of the majority. — Robert Michels

I think a way to behave is to think not in terms of representative government, not in terms of voting, not in terms of electoral politics, but thinking in terms of organizing social movements, organizing in the work place, organizing in the neighborhood, organizing collectives that can become strong enough to eventually take over - first to become strong enough to resist what has been done to them by authority, and second, later, to become strong enough to actually take over the institutions. — Howard Zinn

Tyranny is the political corollary of socialism, as representative government is the political corollary of the market economy. — Ludwig Von Mises

Uncritical reverence for the Founding Fathers was less ubiquitous while they actually lived ... "The Reign of Terror that raged in America during the latter end of the Washington Administration, and the whole of that of Adams, is enveloped in mystery to me. That there were men in the Government hostile to the representative system, was once their toast, though it is now their overthrow, and therefore the fact is established against them." — Thomas Paine

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. — Bernard DeVoto

How could, it was felt, people be so opposed to modernity, and all the many goods it had to offer to people around the world: equality, liberty, prosperity, toleration, pluralism and representative government. — Pankaj Mishra

If all goes well, the Iraqis are going to have a country that's going to have a representative government and will be at peace with its neighbors and in the region. — Douglas Feith

What's been happening in Iraq, what young Americans wearing flak jackets, helmets and flight suits have done is ... created the circumstances under which Iraq can become our closest ally in that part of the world and still have a representative government. And that's going to be a very good thing considering what's going on in that neighborhood. — Oliver North

A newly elected representative quickly discovers that his job in government-aside from making new laws-is to act as a broker, middleman, special pleader and finagler. — William Greider

Though the Floundering Fathers didn't intend it, we now see that representative government quickly turns into the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you doubt this, I congratulate you on not having a television. — Fred Reed

[representative government is] deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, — Karl Marx

Can a non-Western power really hope to benefit from downloading Western scientific knowledge, if it continues to reject that other key part of the West's winning formula: the third institutional innovation of private property rights, the rule of law and truly representative government? — Niall Ferguson

Instead of the function of governing, for which it is radically unfit, the proper office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the government. — John Stuart Mill

What we would be committed to would be a representative government where all the Iraqi people decide who should lead their nation, and lead it in a way that keeps it together as a single nation and where all parts of the nation - Shia, Sunni and Kurds - are able to live free and in peace and believe that their interests are represented by the government. — Colin Powell

It is the US government's desire for the Iraqi people to lead themselves, not for any outside power to be the leadership for Iraq in the future. There may be some transition period where the international community would have to help the Iraqi people put in place a representative government. But that is the goal, not for the United States, or any other nation, for that matter, who might be in such a coalition, if one is formed, to serve as the leader of the Iraqi nation. — Colin Powell

Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class. — Giuseppe Prezzolini

Political leaders or governments owe their position partly to force and partly to popular election. They cannot be regarded as representative of best elements, morally or intellectually, in their respective nations. — Albert Einstein

I think Americans is a very special nation that was created so that people could be free. And they could be free to believe what they wanted. They could be free to work as hard as they wanted, knowing that their labor would accrue to them and to their family, that there wouldn't be a lot of people impinging upon their freedom and telling them what they had to do, and that it would be a nation that was representative of the people, and that it would have a government that was representative of the people rather than one that tried to rule the people. — Benjamin Carson

There is one central characteristic of anarchism on the matter of means, and that central principle is a principle of direct action - of not going through the forms that the society offers you, of representative government, of voting, of legislation, but directly taking power. — Howard Zinn

I have faith in the future of this promised land of America and in its institutions of representative government, but more than that, I have faith in you, the youth of America, to build even more securely on the foundations laid by the faith and devotion of your pioneer fathers. — Harold B. Lee

Without freedom of the press, there can be no representative government. — Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

That fatal drollery called a representative government. — Benjamin Disraeli

Of the judicial department of the Government, the Supreme Court is the head and representative, and to it must come for final decision all the great legal questions which may arise under the Constitution, the laws, or the treaties of the United States. — Samuel Freeman Miller

There are a lot of benefits representative of government and it is far better than any type of dictatorial system and it is far better than a one-man rule situation. — James Bovard

I join cordially in admiring and revering the Constitution of the United States, the result of the collected wisdom of our country. That wisdom has committed to us the important task of proving by example that a government, if organized in all its parts on the Representative principle unadulterated by the infusion of spurious elements, if founded, not in the fears & follies of man, but on his reason, on his sense of right, on the predominance of the social over his dissocial passions, may be so free as to restrain him in no moral right, and so firm as to protect him from every moral wrong. — Thomas Jefferson

Haman is a symbol of a typical ungodly government representative — Sunday Adelaja

Extensive violations of human rights (torture, forced reduction of living standards for much of the population, police-sponsored death squads, destruction of representative institutions or of independent unions, etc.) are directly correlated with US government support. The linkage is not accidental; rather it is systematic. The reason is obvious enough. Client fascism often improves the business climate for American corporations, quite generally the guiding factor in foreign policy. — Noam Chomsky

It is an essential tenet of our whole representative form of government, the idea that there should not be some tyranny which makes it so nobody can even have a chance to vote. — Todd Akin

The natural tendency of representative government, as of modern civilisation, is towards collective mediocrity: and this tendency is increased by all reductions and extensions of the franchise, their effect being to place the principal power in the hands of classes more and more below the highest level of instruction in the community. — John Stuart Mill

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves. — Herbert Marcuse

The spread of democracy, the new foundation of the rule of law, and the creation of fledgling representative governments that honor and respect human rights-together these actions spell out the increasing marginalization of the terrorists, as they have fewer and fewer places to run and hide. — John Cornyn

The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of societythe taking possession of the means of production in the name of societythis is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not abolished. It dies out. — Friedrich Engels

If liberty is worth keeping and free representative government worth saving, we must stand for all American fundamentals-not some, but all. All are woven into the great fabric of our national well-being. We cannot hold fast to some only, and abandon others that, for the moment, we find inconvenient. If one American fundamental is prostrated, others in the end will surely fall. — Albert J. Beveridge

When a government turns from following the will of its people to willing its people to follow - acting according to its own prerogatives - it ceases to be a representative government and instead has transformed into something else. One — Ben Carson

We're leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq with a representative government that was elected by its people. We're building a new partnership between our nations and we are ending a war not with a final battle but with a final march toward home. This is an extraordinary achievement — Barack Obama

Since the 1970s, analyses of the public debt have suffered from the fact that economists have probably relied too much on so-called representative agent models, that is, models in which each agent is assumed to earn the same income and to be endowed with the same amount of wealth (and thus to own the same quantity of government bonds). Such a simplification of reality can be useful at times in order to isolate logical relations that are difficult to analyze in more complex models. Yet by totally avoiding the issue of inequality in the distribution of wealth and income, these models often lead to extreme and unrealistic conclusions and are therefore a source of confusion rather than clarity. — Anonymous

Even a very brief tape-delay introduces a form of censorship into the broadcast - not direct governmental control, but it means that a network representative is in effect guessing at what a government might tolerate, which can be even worse. — Frank Pierson

If there have been those who doubted whether a confederated representative democracy were a government competent to the wise and orderly management of the common concerns of a mighty nation, those doubts have been dispelled. — John Quincy Adams

The word 'security' is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security ... — Hugo Black

When I was first elected to the House in 2006, it was important to me to send a clear message to the people of NY-20: I wanted to be a representative for the people and shed some light on their government, so I became the first member of Congress to post my schedule, my financial disclosures and my earmark requests all online. — Kirsten Gillibrand

The government being the peoples business, it necessarily follows that its operations should be at all times open to the public view. Publicity is therefore as essential to honest administration as freedom of speech is to representative government. Equal rights to all and special privileges to none is the maxim which should control in all departments of government. — William Jennings Bryan

I am very optimistic about
about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration. You're going to see 90,000 American troops come marching home by the end of the summer. You're going to see a stable government in Iraq that is actually moving toward a representative government, — Joe Biden

We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government. — Colin Powell

Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist. — John Stuart Mill

Consequently, citizen legislators, rotating back to their communities after a short period of public service - considered an indispensable and routine characteristic and design of representative government at the time of the founding, and for a century thereafter - have been replaced with a professional ruling class led by governing masterminds. For the most part, they are isolated from the communities from which they hail and are consumed with the daily jockeying for position and power within their ranks. Moreover, they both pander to and lord over their constituents. — Mark R. Levin

For Madison, on the other hand, "a Public Debt is a Public curse," and "in a Representative Government greater than in any other."26 — Joseph J. Ellis

A representative form of government rests nor more on political contributions than on those laws which regulate the descent and transmission of property. — Daniel Webster

Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people. — Garet Garrett

In a democracy the responsibility for the Government's economic policies, which so affect the economy, normally rests with the elected representative of the people: in our case, with the President and the Congress. If these two follow economic policies inimical to the general welfare, they are accountable to the people for their actions on election day. With Federal Reserve independence, however, a body of men exist who control one of the most powerful levers moving the economy and who are responsible to no one. — Wright Patman

Direct popular government of a state larger than a city state had already failed therefore in Italy, because as yet there was no public education, no press, and no representative system; it had failed though these mere mechanical difficulties, before the first Punic War. — H.G.Wells

Unless bureaucracy is constantly resisted, it breaks down representative government and overwhelms democracy. — Ronald Reagan

I don't know that there is one serious American representative that will advise Israel to sit with a terrorist government and negotiate with them. — Ehud Olmert

Colonial governors at their seats of government, and Ministers Plenipotentiary in their ambassadorial residences are very great persons indeed; and when met in society at home, with the stars and ribbons which are common among them now, they are less, indeed, but still something. But at the Colonial and Foreign Offices in London, among the assistant secretaries and clerks, they are hardly more than common men. All the gingerbread is gone there. His Excellency is no more than Jones, and the Representative or Alter Ego of Royalty mildly asks little favours of the junior clerks. — Anthony Trollope

Is he aiming at doing anything, or simply undoing what's been done? It's the great misfortune of our government - this paper administration, of which he's a worthy representative. — Leo Tolstoy

By contrast, China is a repressive regime that denies its citizens the essential freedoms of religion, political dissent and representative self-government. — Todd Akin

They who plead an absolute right cannot be satisfied with anything short of personal representation, because all natural rights must be the rights of individuals; as by nature there is no such thing as politic or corporate personality; all these things are mere fictions of law, they are creatures of voluntary institution; men as men are individuals, and nothing else. They, therefore, who reject the principle of natural and personal representation, are essentially and eternally at variance with those who claim it. As to the first sort of reformers, it is ridiculous to talk to them of the British constitution upon any or upon all of its bases; for they lay it down that every man ought to govern himself, and that where he cannot go himself he must send his representative; that all other government is usurpation; and is so far from having a claim to our obedience, it is not only our right, but our duty, to resist it. — Edmund Burke

It is hard to make government representative when it is also remote. — G.K. Chesterton

When the people are too much attached to savage independence, to be tolerant of the amount of power to which it is for their good that they should be subject, the state of society is not yet ripe for representative government. — John Stuart Mill

The representative system of government is calculated to produce the wisest laws, by collecting wisdom where it can be found. — Thomas Paine

So then because some towns in England are not represented, America is to have no representative at all. They are our children; but when children ask for bread we are not to give a stone. — John Bright

We've been in the nation-building business since World War I, and especially since WWII. The goal is not a Jeffersonian Democracy in Afghanistan, but a representative government that respects human rights, protects its own people, and is a friend of the West. These are very realistic - and necessary - goals. — Oliver North

Americans are poorly served by their media, you know, for the war machine and propaganda machine and the global empire and they're poorly served by what they are being told is representative government. — Henry Rollins

Unity is the only way in which the people of this country can overthrow the fascists, communists, capitalists, and all the other assholes who claim running a representative government is so difficult. The emphasis has been taken from the Bill of Rights and placed on the type of interpretation of the Constitution that best suits the people in power. — William Powell

As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported laissez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individual; it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In political matters, it supported the development of representative government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms of individuals. — Milton Friedman

So I think that if we want to have a Congress, if we want to have government that looks like America, if we want to have government that is truly a representative Democracy, then we need to clearly address how we get our campaign laws out of the way of Democracy. — Carol Moseley Braun

Government is best which is closest to the people. Yet that belief is betrayed by those State and local officials who engage in denying the right of citizens to vote. Their actions serve
only to assure that their State governments and local governments shall be remote from the people, least representative of the people's will and least responsive to the people's wishes. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Among the popular and representative systems of government I do not approve of the federal system: it is too perfect; and it requires virtues and political talents much superior to our own. — Simon Bolivar

We have now in our possession three instruments of civilization, unknown to antiquity. These are the art of printing; free representative government; and, lastly, a pure and spiritual religion, the deep fountain of generous enthusiasm, the mighty spring of bold and lofty designs, the great sanctuary of moral power. — Edward Everett

Government is the political representative of a natural equilibrium, of custom, of inertia; it is by no means a representative of reason. — George Santayana

I officially designated every US ambassador on earth to be my personal human rights representative, and to have the embassy be a haven for people who suffered from abuse by their own government. — Jimmy Carter

The Impression that Pakistan being an Islamic State is thereby a Theocratic State is being sedulously fostered in certain quarters with the sole object of discrediting her in the eyes of the world. To anyone conversant with the basic principles of Islam, it should be obvious that in the fields of civics, Islam has always stood on complete social democracy and social justice, as the history of the early Caliphs will show, and has not sanctioned government by a sacerdotal class deriving its authority from God. The ruler and the ruled alike are #equal before Islamic Law, and the ruler, far from being a vicegerent of God on earth, is but a representative of people who have chosen him to serve them ... Islam has not recognized any distinction between man and man based on sex, race or worldly possessions ...
Fazul Rahman, First Education Minister of Pakistan, All Pakistan Educational Conference, Karachi, Nov 1947 — Fazul Rahman

I expect the notions of personal freedom and representative government would appear radical to a slave of the corporate world." "A — Anthony Ryan

The Republican Party has used objection, obstruction, and filibustering not only to block the necessary processes of government but also in order to make ordinary Americans deeply cynical about Washington. Republicans perpetually run against government and come out on top. But, in the process, they are undermining the foundations of self-rule in a representative democracy. — Mike Lofgren

Praying men are God's agents on earth, the representative of government of Heaven, set to a specific task on the earth. — Edward McKendree Bounds

That instability is inherent in the nature of popular governments, I think very disputable ... A representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislature, executive, and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable. — Alexander Hamilton

Representative government demands an ongoing conversation between legislators and constituents. — Alan Siegel

Perhaps most unsettling, Quigley reveals that real power operates behind the scenes, in secrecy, and with little to fear from so-called democratic elections. He proves that conspiracies, secret societies, and small, powerful networks of individuals are not only real; they're extremely effective at creating or destroying entire nations and shaping the world as a whole. We learn that "representative government" is, at best, a carefully managed con game. — Joseph Plummer

Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians that money can buy. — Edward Abbey

All American politicians are bought and paid for by American lobbyists. We no longer have representative government here. We breed monsters like Kissinger and Nixon and Ronnie Reagan. Our senate and congress are run by pay-offs and special interest money. And the fun part is that most Americans are asleep about it. Give 'em a new SUV and a good J-Lo or Tom Cruise kung-fu flick and a few jolly abortion clinic bombing news clips on the six o'clock news and everybody seems to stay content. Wasn't it Churchill that said any society gets exactly the government it deserves? — Dan Fante

One of the fundamental necessities in a representative government such as ours is to make certain that the men to whom the people delegate their power shall serve the people by whom they are elected, and not the special interests. I believe that every national officer, elected or appointed, should be forbidden to perform any service or receive any compensation, directly or indirectly, from interstate corporations; and a similar provision could not fail to be useful within the States. — Theodore Roosevelt