Affirmative Quotes here

Click Answer to post affirmative quotes here.

Aff Quote
“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.” - Sydney J. Harris

"Has it [popular sovereignty] not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?"

Abraham Lincoln

Does this affirm or negate the resolution

I thought that the affirmative was for popular sovereignty not individual rights.

“The source of power is popular sovereignty, not a divine right to rule. While popular sovereignty -- as the Declaration of Independence announces -- presupposes that the people were ‘endowed by their creator’ with their rights, the American state was not conceived as an arm of God.” – Washington Post

"All good government is and must be republican. But at the same time, you can or will agree with me, that there is not in lexicography a more fraudulent word... Are we not, my friend, in danger of rendering the word republican unpopular in this country by an indiscreet, indeterminate, and equivocal use of it? [...] Whenever I use the word republic with approbation, I mean a government in which the people have collectively, or by representation, an essential share in the sovereignty... the republican forms in Poland and Venice are much worse, and those of Holland and Bern very little better, than the monarchical form in France before the late revolution." - John Adams

"Bad ideas flourish because they are in the interest of powerful groups.”
– Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize winner for Economics and Politics)

“People have so manipulated the concept of freedom that it finally boils down to the right of the stronger and richer to take from the weaker and poorer whatever they still have.”
– Theodor Adorno (Important German Philosopher and Social Scritic)

"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing."
-John Adams on Indiviual Rights

I'd post more, but I'll save some for other peopl

“In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.”-Aristotle

“The source of power is popular sovereignty, not a divine right to rule. While popular sovereignty -- as the Declaration of Independence announces -- presupposes that the people were ‘endowed by their creator’ with their rights, the American state was not conceived as an arm of God.” – Washington Post,

makethemaccountable.com/misc/quoteshtm

“Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.”
-Sydney Harris (journalist/author)

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”
-Abraham Lincoln

"In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns."
-Benjamin Franklin

To speak of popular sovereignty is to place ultimate authority in the people. There are a variety of ways in which sovereignty may be expressed. It may be immediate in the sense that the people make the law themselves, or mediated through representatives who are subject to election and recall; it may be ultimate in the sense that the people have a negative or veto over legislation, or it may be something much less dramatic. In short, popular sovereignty covers a multitude of institutional possibilities. In each case, however, popular sovereignty assumes the existence of some form of popular consent, and it is for this reason that every definition of republican government implies a theory of consent.
-Donald Lutz

Quote from John Adams


"All good government is and must be republican. But at the same time, you can or will agree with me, that there is not in lexicography a more fraudulent word... Are we not, my friend, in danger of rendering the word republican unpopular in this country by an indiscreet, indeterminate, and equivocal use of it? [...] Whenever I use the word republic with approbation, I mean a government in which the people have collectively, or by representation, an essential share in the sovereignty... the republican forms in Poland and Venice are much worse, and those of Holland and Bern very little better, than the monarchical form in France before the late revolution."

Quote :

"Has it [popular sovereignty] not got down as thin as the homeopathic soup that was made by boiling the shadow of a pigeon that had starved to death?"

Abraham Lincoln

Instead of me answering Meridith's question "Does this support or negate the resolution.......(smile)


I would like everyone to do a bit of research on when Abraham Lincoln said this quote. In doing so you will uncover a huge historical application that makes this quote come alive. Hint.... Who does Lincoln debate? What was this person's opinions on Popular Sovereignty?

He debated Stephen Douglas.

His opinions on popular sovereignty was that it was a good thing. He wanted the majority to vote for slavery with popular sovereignty

Was I supposed to post this or not?

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy - Abraham Lincoln

>“The source of power is popular sovereignty, not a divine right to rule. While popular sovereignty -- as the Declaration of Independence announces -- presupposes that the people were ‘endowed by their creator’ with their rights, the American state was not conceived as an arm of God.”
–Washington Post, August 12, 2002

>Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”
-Abraham Lincoln

>"All good government is and must be republican. But at the same time, you can or will agree with me, that there is not in lexicography a more fraudulent word... Are we not, my friend, in danger of rendering the word republican unpopular in this country by an indiscreet, indeterminate, and equivocal use of it? [...] Whenever I use the word republic with approbation, I mean a government in which the people have collectively, or by representation, an essential share in the sovereignty... the republican forms in Poland and Venice are much worse, and those of Holland and Bern very little better, than the monarchical form in France before the late revolution."
-John Adams

>"In free governments, the rulers are the servants and the people their superiors and sovereigns."
-Benjamin Franklin

"A house divided cannot stand"
Abe Lincoln

"United we stand, divided we fall" -Aesop

"Sovereignty, for the same reason as makes it inalieanable, is indivisible; for will either is, or is not, general; it is the will either of the body of the people, or only part of it. In the first case, the will, when declared, is an act of sovereignty and constitutes law: in the second, it is merely a particular will, or act of magistracy--- at the most degree." -Jean-Jacques Rousseau (I also realize that rousseau was not Christian, but he wrote a whole contract on sovereignty and things related to it. I think he knows what he is talking about.)