Universal suffrage

The concept of universal suffrage, also known as general suffrage or common suffrage, consists of the right to vote of all except a small number of adult citizens (or subjects).

Quotes

• Government resting upon the will and universal suffrage of the people has no anchorage except in the people's intelligence.
  • President Grover Cleveland at the celebration of the sesquicentennial of Princeton College (October 22, 1896).

• Ours is a peculiar government, based upon a peculiar idea, and that idea is universal suffrage.
  • Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants", speech in Boston, Massachusetts (1865).

• From the first I saw no chance of bettering the condition of the freedman until he should cease to be merely a freedman and should become a citizen. I insisted that there was no safety for him or for anybody else in America outside the American government; that to guard, protect, and maintain his liberty the freedman should have the ballot; that the liberties of the American people were dependent upon the ballot-box, the jury-box, and the cartridge-box; that without these no class of people could live and flourish in this country; and this was now the word for the hour with me, and the word to which the people of the North willingly listened when I spoke. Hence, regarding as I did the elective franchise as the one great power by which all civil rights are obtained, enjoyed, and maintained under our form of government, and the one without which freedom to any class is delusive if not impossible, I set myself to work with whatever force and energy I possessed to secure this power for the recently-emancipated millions.
  • Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass (1892), p. 460

• To grant suffrage to the black man in this country is not innovation, but restoration. It is a return to the ancient principles and practices of the fathers.
  • James A. Garfield, oration at Ravenna (4 July 1865)

• It is contradictory to say that the same person can be at the same time ruler and ruled. … The great ability of those who are in control in the modern world lies in making the people believe that they are governing themselves; and the people are the more inclined to believe this as they are flattered by it, as they are in any case incapable of sufficient reflection to see its impossibility. It was to create this illusion that “universal suffrage” was invented: the law is supposed to be made by the opinion of the majority, but what is overlooked is that this opinion is something that can very easily be guided and modified; it is always possible, by means of suitable suggestions, to arouse in it currents moving in this or that direction as desired. We cannot recall who it was that first spoke of “manufacturing opinion,” but this expression is very apt.
  • René Guénon, The Crisis of the Modern World (1927) p. 93

• Un jour viendra où il n'y aura plus d'autres champs de bataille que les marchés s'ouvrant au commerce et les esprits s'ouvrant aux idées. Un jour viendra où les boulets et les bombes seront remplacés par les votes, par le suffrage universel des peuples, par le vénérable arbitrage d'un grand sénat souverain qui sera à l'Europe ce que le parlement est à l'Angleterre, ce que la diète est à l'Allemagne, ce que l'assemblée législative est à la France!
  • A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.
  • Victor Hugo, Discours d'ouverture, congrès de la paix, [Opening address, Peace Congress], Paris (21 August 1849); published in Actes et paroles - Avant l'exil (1875).

• I do not mean to suggest that scientific differences should be settled by universal suffrage, but I do conceive that solid proofs must be met by something more than empty and unsupported assertions.
  • Thomas Henry Huxley, A Succinct History of the Controversy respecting the Cerebral Structure of Man and the Apes, Evidence as to Man's place in Nature (1863).

• If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
  • George Bernard Shaw, "Maxims for Revolutionists," #16

• In order to reach universal suffrage we need to build trust.
  • Donald Tsang, as quoted in Hong Kong Lawmakers Reject Tsang's Electoral Plan (Update4) at Bloomberg