Democracy Definition Quotes

What is democracy? If it is the rule of the majority, ignoring the rest, then it is not good, it is very bad! But if it is the rule of the whole citizens, caring the wills of both the majority and the rest, then it is good, then it is real democracy! And the purpose of every real democracy is to be a modern country, to be a modern structure! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

If democracy were to be given any meaning, if it were to go beyond the limits of capitalism and nationalism, this would not come, if history were any guide, from the top. It would come through citizen's movements, educating, organizing, agitating, striking, boycotting, demonstrating, threatening those in power with disruption of the stability they needed. ~ Howard Zinn

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, selfappointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. ~ James Madison

We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy. ~ Joni Mitchell

In the transformed world political context of today, it is more essential than ever that the critique of democracy in the name of difference developed by oppositional intellectuals be formulated so carefully that these thoughts cannot be exploited for nationalist, tribalist, and xenophobic purposes. It is imperative that the politics of the 'differend' not be settled beyond and at the margins of democratic politics. ~ Seyla Benhabib

What good is democracy if you can't get what you want? ~ Drew Carey

Choosing a person to marry is hence just a matter of deciding exactly what kind of suffering we want to endure rather than of assuming we have found a way to skirt the rules of emotional existence. We will all by definition end up with that stock character of our nightmares, "the wrong person."

This needn't be a disaster, however. Enlightened romantic pessimism simply assumes that one person can't be everything to another. We should look for ways to accommodate ourselves as gently and as kindly as we can to the awkward realities of living alongside another fallen creature. There can only ever be a "good enough" marriage.

For this realization to sink in, it helps to have had a few lovers before settling down, not in order to have had a chance to locate "the right person," but in order to have had an ample opportunity to discover at first hand, and in many different contexts, the truth that there isn't any such a person; that everyone really is a bit wrong when considered from close up. ~ Alain De Botton

No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible. ~ Mario Vargas-Llosa

The definition of love is giving. ~ Bai Ling

Turkey shares Europe's fundamental values of democracy and the rule of law. ~ Ali Babacan

The two sides of the equation are the same. We have a tautology. The definition is meaningless. ~ Norman Macbeth

If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership. ~ Barack Obama

It is really one of the most serious faults which can be found with the whole conception of democracy, that its cultural function must move on the basis of the common denominator. Such a point of view indeed would make a mess of all of the values which we have developed for examining works of art. It would address one end of education in that it would consider that culture which was available to everyone, but in that achievement it would eliminate culture itself.
This is surely the death of all thought.
This quote is taken from "The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art" by Mark Rothko, written 1940-1 and published posthumously in 2004 by Yale University Press, pp.126-7. ~ Mark Rothko

One reason that challenge brings happiness is that it allows you to expand your self - definition. You become larger. Suddenly you can do yoga or make homemade beer or speak a decent amount of Spanish. Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened. ~ Gretchen Rubin

History provides many examples of democracy crushed by people who said to be the champion of "genuine democracy" and "the people's real meaning". The realization about this may lead us to a defence position that conceals that democracy is an extraordinarily demanding way of rule. It must constantly find new ways to revitalize, to reach out to people and make them active. Dictatorships offers a machinery of obedience, closed and externally well-oiled. Democracy is based on fairness, openness and pulsating life. Therefore it must constantly be won again. ~ Olof Palme

Some commentators have drawn such a stark and gloomy picture of the Weimar Republic's early difficulties that the Republic seems foredoomed to failure from the outset ... The conditions in which Weimar democracy were born were certainly not such as to help it flourish; and as it unfolded, it was clearly saddled with a burden of problems, in a range of areas. ~ Mary Fulbrook

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. ~ George Bernard Shaw

A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality. ~ Baron De Montesquieu

Offering democracy to an Arab is like bringing a horse to a steakhouse. ~ Jeff Cooper

We should be supportive of the president and supportive of rights of all in a pluralistic democracy that we're called to love. And we live our faith; we don't legislate our faith. ~ Otis Moss III

A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression" - from "The Art of Fiction ~ Henry James

In this century, we are about to enter interplanetary civilization.
In order to survive, we need to go beyond neoclassical economics definition.
We define it as interplanomics. ~ Toba Beta

Therefore, until the day I die, I am going to do what I can, regardless of the cost to me, to try to stop this awful corruption that is destroying our beloved democracy. ~ John Jay Hooker

We have always trusted the control of our doomsday devices to the "key" elected of our nations.
The current "interests" reorganizing the world now transcend the interests of nations.
So these weapons will only be launched to serve interests other than that of the nations that launch them;

Hence the "key" elected… ~ Haroutioun Bochnakian

Admire the United
States not for what we were but for what we might become. Self-governing
democracy was not an established creed, but a program for growth. ~ John Dos Passos

The ruling class is the rich ... And those people are so able to manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy. ~ Walter Cronkite

Just as war is too important to leave it to the generals, science and technology are too important to leave in the hands of the experts. ~ Sheldon Rampton

The harsh reality of modern world is that almost every single puny human has become slave to a neurotic society. And no government, democratic or otherwise, can bring progress in such a mentally degraded society. The only way forward is inward. Look inside - look inside, for the society has conditioned every single one of its members to look outside, and that is the reason behind all the conflicts, chaos and inequalities in the world. ~ Abhijit Naskar

He saw during the Weimar Republic that the left intelligentsia hated capitalism, and hence social democracy as well, far too much to think that Nazism could be worse. ~ Clive James

It is the final sign of imbecility in a people that it calls cats dogs and describes the sun as the moon - and is very particular about the preciseness of these pseudonyms. To be wrong, and to be carefully wrong, that is the definition of decadence. The disease called aphasia, in which people begin by saying tea when they mean coffee, commonly ends in their silence. Silence of this stiff sort is the chief mark of the powerful parts of modern society. They all seem straining to keep things in rather than to let things out. ~ G.K. Chesterton

We can keep whatever we like about manhood but adjust the parts of the definition that are keeping men back. ~ Hanna Rosin

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice. ~ Edward W. Said

We have to have a more realistic foreign policy and not a utopian one where we say, oh, we're going to spread freedom and democracy, and everybody in the Middle East is going to love us. They are not going to love us. ~ Rand Paul

The attractive power of love is intensified proportional to the intensity of thoughts, perception of duration, and the perceived distance. ~ Debasish Mridha

...I often wondered about the definition of home. Is it the place where you live, or is it the place where the people you love reside?... ~ Becky Aikman

Freedom and democracy are nothing but instruments, just like stability. The goal is called progress and growth. Anyone who puts freedom ahead of stability is hurting growth. ~ Bashar Al-Assad

We measure the success of schools not by the kinds of human beings they promote but by whatever increases in reading scores they chalk up. We have allowed quantitative standards, so central to the adult economic system, to become the principal yardstick for our definition of our children's worth. ~ Kenneth Keniston

Everyone should try write two philosophical observations of about 300 words a day, to keep the brain fit. The brain is a muscle too, you know. If you don't use it it gets out of shape, and any sort of movement will be tiring for it.

One should not be interested in 'whom is interested', one doesnt stretch the other muscles in the hope that someone sees it either. Thinking and writing are exersizes that serve their own sake: to keep your brain fit, and to produce raw material that later on you can maybe make a book out of. Good enough for me. If i have to worry about 'whom is interested' in what I think or do I would probably never create anything..

(if anything is typical about the modern age is that almost everyone is only interested in himself, so under such conditions the concern is even more silly, since one knows that by definition no one will be interested in anything unless they have to. There are of course some exceptions to this rule, fortunately, but most people seem pretty comfortable in their reality tunnels) ~ Martijn Benders

As the leader of Southeast Asia's oldest democracy, I am always keen to share our experiences. In the half-century since independence, we have found that steady reform is the best way to secure lasting stability. It is a process that continues in Malaysia to this day. ~ Najib Razak

In some respects I have been the most unlucky because I have spent more time living as a refugee outside my country than I have spent in Tibet. On the other hand, it has been very rewarding for me to live in a democracy and to learn about the world in a way that we Tibetans had never known before. ~ Dalai Lama

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism. ~ Herbert Croly

The key to having everything we want lies in expanding our definition of what's possible and focusing on what we want. That's it! Once we believe in the possibility of anything and focus in on exactly what we want to have, exactly what we want to do, then our minds can take us there. ~ Mark Victor Hansen