Representative Democracy Quotes

“Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.”
― Herbert Marcuse

“Legislators represent people, not trees or acres. Legislators are elected by voters, not farms or cities or economic interests. As long as ours is a representative form of government, and our legislatures are those instruments of government elected directly by and directly representative of the people, the right to elect legislators in a free and unimpaired fashion is a bedrock of our political system.”
― Earl Warren

“Representative democracy, however, harmonizes marvelously with the capitalist economic system. This new statist system, basing itself on the alleged sovereignty of the so-called will of the people, as supposedly expressed by their alleged representatives in mock popular assemblies, incorporates the two principal and necessary conditions for the progress of capitalism: state centralization, and the actual submission of the sovereign people to the intellectual governing minority, who, while claiming to represent the people, unfailingly exploits them.”
― Mikhail Bakunin

“The people are committed to ruinous policies, all without noticing. They have neither the experience nor the time to study all these laws and so they leave everything to their elected representatives. These naturally promote the interests of their class rather than the prosperity of the people, and their greatest talent is to sugarcoat their bitter measures, to render them more palatable to the populace. Representative government is a system of hypocrisy and perpetual falsehood. Its success rests on the stupidity of the people and the corruption of the public mind.”
― Mikhail Bakunin

“Representative democracy, as in, say, the United States or Great Britain, would be criticized by an anarchist of this school on two grounds. First of all because there is a monopoly of power centralized in the State, and secondly and critically—because representative democracy is limited to the political sphere and in no serious way encroaches on the economic sphere. Anarchists of this tradition have always held that democratic control of one's productive life is at the core of any serious human liberation, or, for that matter, of any significant democratic practice. That is, as long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if even meaningful.”
― Noam Chomsky, Chomsky On Anarchism

“It has been widely said in the recent past that economic freedom can exist without the institution of property, because, under a Communist system, men own though they own corporately: they can dispose of their own lives, though such disposition be indirect and through delegates. This false argument is born of the dying Parliamentary theory of politics; it proceeds from the false statement which deceived three generations of Europe, from the French Revolution to our own day, that corporate action may be identified with individual action. So men speak of their so-called “Representatives” as having been “chosen” by themselves. But in experienced reality there is no such thing as this imagined permanent corporate action through delegation. On some very simple and universal point, which all understand, in which all are interested and on which all feel strongly, the desire of the bulk of people may be expressed for a brief moment by delegation. Men voting under strong emotion on one single clear issue, may instruct others to carry out their wishes; but the innumerable acts of choice and expression which make up human life can never work through a system of delegation. Even in the comparatively simple field of mere political action, delegation destroys freedom. Parliaments have everywhere proved irreconcilable with democracy. They are not the people. They are oligarchies, and those oligarchies are corrupt because they pretend to a false character and to be, or to mirror, the nation. They are in reality, and can only be, cliques of professional politicians; unless, indeed, they are drawn from an aristocratic class which the community reveres. For class government, the product of the aristocratic spirit, is the condition of oligarchies working successfully and therefore of a reasonably efficient Parliament. Such an instrument is not to be found save in the hands of a governing class.”
― Hilaire Belloc, An Essay on the Restoration of Property

“Surely part of the moral meaning of representative government is that the representatives from all parts of a vast nation coming together in a great mosaic not only represent the interests and visions of their respective localities but also then learn from each other, affect each other, reason together, diminish their respective provincialisms, and shape something nearer to the common good.”
― William Lee Miller, Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography

“The basic principal of this government is the will of the people.”
― Robert Marion La Follette

“Stereotypes are not actually always proven;
Sometimes they are programmed.”
― Tiffany Luard

“Protesting is a form of direct democracy, but in America national policy is made of representative democracy.”
― Charles M. Blow, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto

“Better a fool chosen by the people than a sage thrust upon them by tradition.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“In my eyes the only rightful King or Queen is the one who dissolves their kingdom and establishes a democracy.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“The government's job is not to govern but listen, and the citizen's duty is to speak as beings nonpartisan.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Representation is Degradation (The Sonnet)

Nationalism is but a precursor to fascism,
Representation is but a precursor to corruption.
Delegation is but a precursor to destitution,
Law-abidance is but a precursor to degradation.
Representation without accountability is just,
As undemocratic as taxation without representation.
Trading in one party for another is not change,
But merely the re-initiation of prehistoric division.
Democracy that shows no sign of nonpartisanism,
Is but a petri dish of prejudice most blinding.
Such a democracy stuck on representation,
Is but a silent dictatorship in the making.
Neither law nor party loyalty will elevate the society.
All my hope, therefore, lies upon civilian responsibility.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Representation is but silent regress.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Representation without accountability is just as undemocratic as taxation without representation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Representation is code for civic hibernation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Esperanza Impossible: 100 Sonnets of Ethics, Engineering & Existence

“If I Were Head of State (The Sonnet)

If I were the head of state,
my first act in government will be,
to dissolve the government,
and redistribute all powers of society,
to experts in their respective fields.

Civil servants and experts run a nation anyway,
While brainless politicians take all the credit.
Time to give credit and power where they're due,
Putting an end to the circus of representatives.

Instead of trading one incompetent fool for another,
We gotta rotate the civil servants office to office.
In a civilized democracy, civilians are the law,
Never you forget that, never let anyone forget it!

If I were the head of state, that is the end of state.
Dictatorships empower leaders, democracy empowers citizens.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“Dictatorships empower leaders, democracy empowers citizens.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“And yet the bawling voice, the black gown, the tramp of feet on the stone, the mace and the dingy felt hats somehow suggest, better than scarlet and trumpets, that the Commons are taking their seats in their own House to proceed with the business of governing their own country. Vague though our history may be, we somehow feel that we common people won this right centuries ago, and have held it for centuries past, and the mace is our mace and the Speaker is our speaker and we have no need of trumpeters and gold and scarlet to usher our representative into our own House of Commons.”
― Virginia Woolf, The London Scene: Six Essays on London Life

“English: "Not voting means choosing totality; voting for an empty envelope means choosing democracy, but none of the candidates adequately represent your views."

Česky: „Nevolit znamená volit totalitu; volit prázdnou obálku znamená volit demokracii, ale žádný z kandidátů dostatečně nereprezentuje tvé názory.”
― Sebastián Wortys