Republic, Lost Quotes

“Politics is that rare sport where the amateur contest is actually more interesting than the professional.”
― Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It

“In the 1970s, 3 percent of retiring members became lobbyists. Thirty years later, that number has increased by an order of magnitude. Between 1998 and 2004, more than 50 percent of senators and 42 percent of House members made that career transition.”
― Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It

“We take this for granted in America today: a democracy in which the first test of credibility is not votes, or broad public support, but money.”
― Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It

“But sometimes they're just oblivious, and their obliviousness brings out the worst in me. I remember once talking to one about the principle of 'one person, one vote' -- the Supreme Court's doctrine that forces states to ensure the weight one person's vote is equal to the weight of everyone else's. He had done work early in his career to push that principle along, and considered it, as he told me, 'among the most important values now written into our Constitution.' 'Isn't it weird then', I asked hime, 'that the law would obsess about making sure that on Election Day, my vote is just as powerful as yours, but stand blind to the fact that in the days before Election Day, because of your wealth, your ability to affect that election is a million times greater than mine?' My friend -- or at least friend until that moment -- didn't say a word.”
― Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It

“But it is to say that a basic idea of a representative democracy—one that argues over fundamental choices of policy, through the battle between differently committed representatives—is not the reality of our democracy anymore. We’ve settled into what Francis Fukuyama calls a “vetocracy,” where change of almost any kind, whether from the Right or the Left, is practically always stopped.”
― Lawrence Lessig, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It