Zephyr Teachout Quotes

"The corruption that hides in plain sight is the real threat to our democracy."

"Anti-corruption is a core constitutional value. It always has been."

"Everybody's always going to have some self-interest. When it passes a certain point, that's when it become corruption."

"Corruption requires looking into someone's soul and making judgments about their intent."

"We, as lawyers, must point out that unrestrained power is almost always abusive."

"We fought a revolution to free ourselves from arbitrary power and the whims of a monarch."

"The work of being a citizen is hard and annoying, but it can pay off."

"Voters have a responsibility to make a judgment with whatever facts are available on Election Day."

"A government should not become too big to fulfill one of its most basic functions: representation."

"I hope that we increasingly shift power to local governments."

"Collective decisions about health care and education are best answered on a local level."

"Women's voices need to be in politics, and shaping politics from the very beginning, not serve as an afterthought."

"One of the things I care about a lot is public financing in elections."

"The key to fixing public financing is to free politics from big money."

"To be fair, money and politics never work in a directly straight line."

"Facebook and Google are essentially an advertising duopoly, and we have almost no idea how their algorithms work."

"You may think of Google as a single organic entity, but in 2011 it bought a different company every week."

"Every constitutional standard is engaged in difficult but important line-drawing."

"Quid pro quo has an interesting history. It's originally a contract law term, not a criminal bribery term."

"I am not Pollyannaish about the depths of the challenges we face."

"Parties are fun, but they don't create community."

"It's always a fun game to go back and guess what long-past people would think."