„All government rests upon consent, and consent is not to be had without taking counsel with the most eminent or influential or representative of the governed, and seeking their advice: the act of taking counsel cannot be separated from the act of exercising authority. All government rests also upon upon habit, upon being exercised in the same way or a similar way to that in which the governed remember or believe that it was exercised before. Brute force can break with habit; but as soon as brute force begins to turn into government, it does so by starting to observe habitual modes of behaviour. Habitual forms or institutions for counsel and consent are thus of the essence of government.“

17 U.S. (4 Wheaton) 316, 428
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819)

1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Kontext: Judge Douglas frequently, with bitter irony and sarcasm, paraphrases our argument by saying: "The white people of Nebraska are good enough to govern themselves, but they are not good enough to govern a few miserable negroes!"
Well! I doubt not that the people of Nebraska are and will continue to be as good as the average of people elsewhere. I do not say the contrary. What I do say is that no man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet-anchor of American republicanism. Our Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that, according to our ancient faith, the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Now the relation of master and slave is pro tanto a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow ALL the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.

Remarks to American Field Service Students http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/speeches/address_convention_hall.pdf (15 July 1958)
1950s

If we build strong and long, we must build upon moral principle.
1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

1900s, A Square Deal (1903)
Kontext: The failure in public and in private life thus to treat each man on his own merits, the recognition of this government as being either for the poor as such or for the rich as such, would prove fatal to our Republic, as such failure and such recognition have always proved fatal in the past to other republics. A healthy republican government must rest upon individuals, not upon classes or sections. As soon as it becomes government by a class or by a section, it departs from the old American ideal.

Frame of Government (1682)
Kontext: Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad; if it be ill, they will cure it. But, if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn.

319 U.S. 641
Judicial opinions, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943)
Kontext: 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.

Quelle: The Republic of Thieves

Quoted in Jean Lacouture, Léon Blum (1979), p. 206.

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://web.archive.org/web/20160319090912/https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA333#v=onepage&q&f=false (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 333
1860s, Speech (June 1862)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)
Kontext: 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. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Book III, "Of Obedience"
Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

Quelle: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 282

Leonard Read Journals, November 4, 1951 https://history.fee.org/leonard-read-journal/1951/leonard-e-read-journal-november-1951/

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Attributed to Madison by Frederick Nymeyer in Progressive Calvinism: Neighborly Love and Ricardo's Law of Association, January 1958, p. 31. The source is given there as the 1958 calendar of Spiritual Motivation. It subsequently appeared in Rousas John Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 541; Jerry Falwell, Listen America! (1980), p. 51; David Barton, The Myth of Separation Between Church and State (1989); and William J. Federer, America's God and Country Encyclopedia of Quotations (1994) p. 411. David Barton has since declared it "unconfirmed" after Madison scholars reported that this statement appears nowhere in the writings or recorded utterances of James Madison. http://www.members.tripod.com/candst/boston2.htm It appears to be an expansion and corruption of Madison's reference (Federalist Papers XXXIX) to "that honourable determination which animates every votary of freedom, to rest all our political experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
Misattributed