Representative Government Quotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society. ~ Alexander Hamilton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[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

Built up by the middle classes to hold their own against royalty, sanctioning, and, at the same time strengthening, their sway over the workers, parliamentary rule is pre-eminently a middle-class rule. The upholders of this system have never seriously maintained that a parliament or a municipal council represent a nation or a city. The most intelligent among them know that this is impossible. The middle classes have simply used the parliamentary system to raise a protecting barrier against the pretensions of royalty, without giving the people liberty. But gradually, as the people become conscious of their real interests, and the variety of their interests is growing, the system can no longer work. Therefore democrats of all countries vainly imagine various palliatives. The Referendum is tried and found to be a failure; proportional representation is spoken of, the representation of minorities, and other parliamentary Utopias. In a word, they strive to find what is not to be found, and after each new experiment they are bound to recognize that it was a failure; so that confidence in Representative Government vanishes more and more. ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

That fatal drollery called a representative government. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

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

It is the old masculine spirit of government as authority which is so slow in adapting itself to the democratic idea of government as service. That it should be a representative government they grasp, but representative of what? of the common will, they say; the will of the majority;--never thinking that it is the common good, the common welfare, that government should represent. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate? ~ Will Rogers

And now in the union Jurgis met men who explained all this mystery to him; and he learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now ~ Upton Sinclair

I understand that government should live within its means, value the money it holds in trust from you the taxpayer, avoid waste and, above all else, observe the first maxim of good government: namely, do no avoidable harm. ~ Tony Abbott

Nobody - myself included - believes that we could ever achieve total information awareness. But the government needs to set goals and long-range objectives. Total information awareness is a good goal. ~ John Poindexter

When a government becomes powerful it is destructive, extravagant and violent; it is an usurer which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance, for votes with which to perpetuate itself. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Government is not peaceful; it is inherently coercive. ~ Ed Crane

The relationships that people have - that are sexual, psychological, emotional - these relationships are not open to supervision by parents, schools, churches, or government. Nobody has any right to intervene at all in any kind of relationship like that. ~ Madalyn Murray O'Hair

[In ancient Rome,] why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew? Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler. ~ George Lucas

A government may only govern so long as the people, through their representatives, vote it the money to carry on. ~ Judy LaMarsh

Crisis is a mode of government. ~ Comité Invisible

When a private enterprise fails, it is closed down; when a government enterprise fails, it is expanded. Isn't that exactly what's been happening with drugs? ~ Milton Friedman

The Chinese Communist Party has seen fit to protect most property rights because it recognizes that it has a self-interest in doing so. But the party faces no legal constraints other than its own internal political controls if it decides to violate property rights. Many peasants find their land coveted by municipal authorities and developers who want to turn it into commercial real estate, high-density housing, shopping centers, and the like, or else into public infrastructure like roads, dams, or government offices. There are large incentives for developers to work together with corrupt local officials to illegally take land away from peasants or urban homeowners, and such takings have been perhaps the largest single source of social discontent in contemporary China.33 ~ Francis Fukuyama

There is danger that totalitarian governments, not subject to vigorous popular debate, will underestimate the will and unity of democratic societies where vital interests are concerned. ~ John F. Kennedy

We can talk about corporations all day long but my goal is to help the middle class, somebody who makes too much to be on government assistance but still lives paycheck to paycheck. ~ Lindsey Graham

We shall have world government whether you like it or not, by conquest or consent. ~ James Warburg

The only legitimate purpose of government is to serve citizens, and ... the only legitimate purpose of technology is to improve our lives, not to manipulate or enslave us. ~ Rebecca MacKinnon

That rule is the better which is exercised over better subjects. ~ Aristotle.

But France did not have a normal government: it had a collection of caffeinated intellectuals ~ Tom Reiss

This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America. This President puts his faith in government. We put our faith in the American people. ~ Mitt Romney

They also set a pattern that has since become familiar - when trouble came, the overt, political officers of the visible government almost invariably would say they had no advance warning. The CIA in turn would say it had provided adequate warning. The public would be left to take its choice, provided it could weave its way through the maze of self-serving semantics from both sides. ~ David Wise

Our Government understands that local, community organizations are essential in addressing social issues like economic development, poverty, education and integration in Canadian communities. The Community and College Social Innovation Fund will connect the innovative talent of researchers and students at colleges and polytechnics to meet the research needs of local community organizations to build stronger, safer, healthier communities. ~ Ed Holder

Shall I faint, now that I have poured out the spirit of my mind to the world, and treated many subjects with truth, with freedom, with power, because I have been followed with one cry of abuse ever since for not being a Government tool? ~ William Hazlitt

By definition, the moment one crosses from center to left, one accepts more government control of people's lives. Therefore, the further left society moves, the more there is government control over its citizens' lives. It is astonishing that this obvious fact is not universally acknowledged and that the Left has somehow successfully portrayed itself as preoccupied with personal liberty. ~ Dennis Prager

Ronald Reagan cut taxes to raise the deficit to stop liberals in future years from increasing spending. Obama will raise spending to raise the deficit to stop conservatives in future years from cutting taxes. As he funds every liberal dream - from alternative energy production to infrastructure renovation to more federal revenue sharing - he will force a massive expansion in the size of government for a decade to come. ~ Dick Morris

We need better options for securing the Internet. Instead of looking primarily for top-down government intervention, we can enlist the operators and users themselves. ~ Jonathan Zittrain

In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies. I would think a former employee of the federal government could grasp that concept. ~ Blake Crouch

There'd never been a more advantageous time to be a criminal in America than during the 13 years of Prohibition. At a stroke, the American government closed down the fifth largest industry in the United States - alcohol production - and just handed it to criminals - a pretty remarkable thing to do. ~ Bill Bryson

This morning we were notified about the horrible news of the series of terrorist attacks in the United States, that have left a great trail of destruction. Mexico expresses its condolences to the Government and the American people for the irreparable human losses. We also express our energetic condemnation to these attacks. I have informed President George Bush of our feelings of sorrow and our solidarity in such difficult moments. ~ Vicente Fox

The government ought to stay out of the prayer business. ~ Jimmy Carter

New Rule: Just because a country elects a smart president doesn't make it a smart country. A couple of weeks ago, I was asked on CNN if I thought Sarah Palin could get elected president, and I said I hope not, but I wouldn't put anything past this stupid country. Well, the station was flooded with emails, and the twits hit the fan. And you could tell that these people were really mad, because they wrote entirely in CAPITAL LETTERS!!! Worst of all, Bill O'Reilly refuted my contention that this is a stupid country by calling me a pinhead, which (a) proves my point, and (b) is really funny coming from a doody-face like him.

Now, before I go about demonstration how, sadly, easy it is to prove the dumbness that's dragging us down, let me just say that ignorance has life-and-death consequences. On the eve of the Iraq War, seventy percent of Americans thought Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11. Six years later, thirty-four percent still do. Or look at the health-care debate: At a recent town hall meeting in South Carolina, a man stood up and told his congressman to "keep your government hands off my Medicare," which is kind of like driving cross-country to protest highways.

This country is like a college chick after two Long Island iced teas: We can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget the town halls, and replace them with study halls.

Listen to some of these stats: ~ Bill Maher

We are the only government upon whose word every man may rely absolutely, and because of that we command infinite credit, infinite obedience, infinite respect If we say to anyone, "Do this and your reward will be such and such," there is no doubt in his mind that he will be rewarded. If we say villages breaking a certain ordinance will be burned to the ground, there is no doubt. We speak little, but every word drops like a weight of iron - ~ Gene Wolfe