Consent Of The Governed Quotes by David Hume, Walter Lippmann, Robert H. Jackson, Mahatma Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas I. Emerson and many others.
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
The consent of the governed” is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.
We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.
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.
If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.
Once one accepts the premise of the Declaration of Independence – that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” – it follows that the governed must, in order to exercise their right of consent, have full freedom of expression.
For in reason, all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery.
It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.
Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government.
In a government bottomed on the will of all, the… liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed
No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.
The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.
Voting is the foundational act that breathes life into the principle of the consent of the governed.
We are a nation that has a government-not the other way around. And that makes us special among the nations of the earth.
