Consent Of The Governed Quotes

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.

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.

We are a nation that has a government – not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the earth. Our government has no power except that granted to it by the people It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.

The mass of the citizens is the safest depositary of their own rights.

Voting is the foundational act that breathes life into the principle of the consent of the governed.

Two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers gave us a democracy. It was based upon the simple, yet noble, idea that government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.

Our nation is built on the bedrock principle that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

No peace can last, or ought to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle that governments derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to hand peoples from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were property.

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.

The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose.

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.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

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.

Government itself is founded upon the great doctrine of the consent of the governed, and has its cornerstone in the memorable principle that men are endowed with inalienable rights.

The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.