"Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government"
About this Quote
King’s line flatters the public and scolds it at the same time: government isn’t a mysterious machine run by “them,” it’s the hardened residue of what “we” are willing to agree on, tolerate, or ignore. Calling government “organized opinion” strips away the romance of great-man leadership and replaces it with something more democratic and more unsettling. If policy is, at bottom, opinion with an office and a budget, then citizens don’t get to treat state failure as an alien force. They helped author it.
The phrase “in the last analysis” is doing quiet work. It concedes that institutions matter - laws, civil service, cabinets, courts - but insists that underneath the machinery sits legitimacy: a shared sense of what’s acceptable. King, a long-serving Canadian prime minister who navigated labor unrest, depression-era pressures, and wartime governance, understood that stability in a plural country depends less on theatrical conviction than on continuously managed consent. “Organized” signals that opinion must be aggregated and disciplined through parties, elections, media, unions, civic groups - all the messy intermediaries that turn sentiment into action.
The sting comes in the second sentence. “Little or no public opinion” doesn’t mean people lack feelings; it means they lack articulation, attention, or channels. A disengaged public leaves a vacuum that gets filled by private interests, patronage networks, and bureaucratic inertia. King’s warning lands especially well today: when public opinion is fragmented into outrage bursts or siloed feeds, organization falters - and “bad government” isn’t an aberration, it’s the default.
The phrase “in the last analysis” is doing quiet work. It concedes that institutions matter - laws, civil service, cabinets, courts - but insists that underneath the machinery sits legitimacy: a shared sense of what’s acceptable. King, a long-serving Canadian prime minister who navigated labor unrest, depression-era pressures, and wartime governance, understood that stability in a plural country depends less on theatrical conviction than on continuously managed consent. “Organized” signals that opinion must be aggregated and disciplined through parties, elections, media, unions, civic groups - all the messy intermediaries that turn sentiment into action.
The sting comes in the second sentence. “Little or no public opinion” doesn’t mean people lack feelings; it means they lack articulation, attention, or channels. A disengaged public leaves a vacuum that gets filled by private interests, patronage networks, and bureaucratic inertia. King’s warning lands especially well today: when public opinion is fragmented into outrage bursts or siloed feeds, organization falters - and “bad government” isn’t an aberration, it’s the default.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
More Quotes by Mackenzie
Add to List
