Democracy Quotes

Collection of famous quotes and sayings about Democracy.

Quotes About Democracy

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Public access to government information is a fundamental prerequisite to a functioning democracy. A democratic system is based on the notion that government legitimacy requires the consent of the governed. To be meaningful that consent must be informed. ~ John Podesta
Democracy quotes by John Podesta
What are the maxims of Democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue. ~ John Marshall
Democracy quotes by John Marshall
We should - we will - welcome people of faith into the political process ... It is essential that believers enter the arena. Your involvement in politics helps determine how well our democracy works. We have finally learned that government programs cannot solve our problems. Government can hand out money, but government cannot put hope in our hearts or a sense of purpose in our lives. ~ George W. Bush
Democracy quotes by George W. Bush
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. ~ Gore Vidal
Democracy quotes by Gore Vidal
Democracy is a continuous, open process of civility.
A democracy can never be "done"; updating democracy can never be over.

Democracy can be nothing else but a continuous process, because we use it to organize our life, and life is nothing but a continuous process.

Democracy can be compared to an operating system or an anti-virus software; if it does not get perpetually updated, it becomes obsolete very fast.

Trusting the updates or the "improvements" of democracy to the elected and the owned mass media is like trusting the updates of an anti-virus program to virus creators; it defeats the purpose of updates or improvements. ~ Haroutioun Bochnakian
Democracy quotes by Haroutioun Bochnakian
The principle of democracy is all about delegation of power by the vast majority of citizens through a few chosen representatives chosen on merit and competence. ~ N. R. Narayana Murthy
Democracy quotes by N. R. Narayana Murthy
I don't find any difference between Islam and Islamic fundamentalists. I believe religion is the root, and from the root fundamentalism grows as a poisonous stem. If we remove fundamentalism and keep religion, then one day or another fundamentalism will grow again. I need to say that because some liberals always defend Islam and blame fundamentalists for creating problems. But Islam itself oppresses women. Islam itself doesn't permit democracy and it violates human rights. ~ Taslima Nasrin
Democracy quotes by Taslima Nasrin
Constitutional democracy has created astonishing and apparently irreversible social progress. All we're interested in is talking about when government doesn't work. ~ Tony Kushner
Democracy quotes by Tony Kushner
That's what separates out American democracy from dictators and horrible governments across the world and the reason why that works is that we have a president that can consult with congress before making big decisions. That doesn't just make a unilateral decision to go in for military conflict. ~ Charles R. Chamberlain
Democracy quotes by Charles R. Chamberlain
Both groups [of pundits] were critics, and that is the heart of the problem. If you are a pundit, you seem so smart when you are telling the President what he did wrong ... This [is] mostly BS. ~ Jeffrey A. Miller
Democracy quotes by Jeffrey A. Miller
Politics /n/: from 'poly ticks', short for 'many small bloodsucking insects'. ~ Henry Spencer
Democracy quotes by Henry Spencer
The fact that an African American sits in the White House at the helm of government in the United States of America on this 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation represents both phenomenal political symbolism and a victory of faith in democracy that should not be lost on any American. ~ Aberjhani
Democracy quotes by Aberjhani
The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy. ~ Thomas Paine
Democracy quotes by Thomas Paine
The orgy room at Dave's Baths was democracy made flesh; race and social standing were checked at the door along with clothes. ~ Christopher Bram
Democracy quotes by Christopher Bram
I'm all for experimenting with sortition - randomly selected representative bodies of citizens. But I don't favor direct democracy. We're busy. We have lives. There is reddit. Who has time to work out the right answer to the thousand policy choices a gov't must make all the time? ~ Lawrence Lessig
Democracy quotes by Lawrence Lessig
There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet. ~ Muammar Al-Gaddafi
Democracy quotes by Muammar Al-Gaddafi
My links with [Mahatma] Gandhi now are very political links because I do not believe there is any other politics available to us in the late twentieth century, a period of a totalitarianism linked with the market. There is really no other way you can do politics and create freedom for people without the kinds of instruments he revived. Civil disobedience is a way to create permanent democracy, perennial democracy, a direct democracy. ~ Vandana Shiva
Democracy quotes by Vandana Shiva
I think Churchill is right, the only thing to be said for democracy is that there is nothing else that's any better, and therefore he used to say, Tyranny tempered by assassination, but lots of assassination. People say, If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better. I say the Congress is too damn representative. It's just as stupid as the people are; just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish. ~ Dean Acheson
Democracy quotes by Dean Acheson
Thus, experience has ever shown, that education, as well as religion, aristocracy, as well as democracy and monarchy, are, singly, totally inadequate to the business of restraining the passions of men, of preserving a steady government, and protecting the lives, liberties, and properties of the people ... Religion, superstition, oaths, education, laws, all give way before passions, interest, and power, which can be resisted only by passions, interest, and power. ~ John Adams
Democracy quotes by John Adams
Democracy functions insofar as individuals can participate meaningfully in the public arena, meanwhile running their own affairs, individually and collectively, without illegitimate interference by concentrations of power. Functioning democracy presupposes relative equality in access to resources - material, informational, and other - a truism as old as Aristotle. In theory, governments are instituted to serve their "domestic constituencies" and are to be subject to their will. A measure of functioning democracy, then, is the extent to which the theory approximates reality, and the "domestic constituencies" genuinely approximate the population. ~ Noam Chomsky
Democracy quotes by Noam Chomsky
The only part of my mother's experience that still gets to me is the way she and people like her were looked down upon for asking America to be America, for asking for full and equal participation in our democracy. ~ Julian Castro
Democracy quotes by Julian Castro
But here's the ugly truth: nature doesn't care about democracy, or who's right, or what's fair. And because of the slow-change aspect of climate, we can't wait until the worst effects are upon us to make a decision
by then, it would be far, far too late. The scenario we may be faced with is one where doing something for the wrong reasons, run by the wrong people, may still save more lives than holding out for a more appealing option. ~ Jamais Cascio
Democracy quotes by Jamais Cascio
The real world of American society is one which it is very misleading to call simply a democracy. Of course, it is in a sense a democracy, but it is one in which there are enormous inequities in the distribution of power and force. For example, the entire commercial and industrial system is in principle excluded from the democratic process, including everything that goes on within it ~ Noam Chomsky
Democracy quotes by Noam Chomsky
I don't know. I love the idea of democracy, the hope, yes, I love that. I couldn't live without that. But the country? You mean the thing on the map, lines, everything inside the lines is good and nothing outside them matters? How can an adult love such a childish idea? ~ Ursula K. Le Guin
Democracy quotes by Ursula K. Le Guin
The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral. Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy. ~ George W. Bush
Democracy quotes by George W. Bush
Without a strong educational system democracy is crippled. Knowledge is not only key to power. It is the citadel of human freedom. ~ Harry S. Truman
Democracy quotes by Harry S. Truman
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries you have these great nation states hurling their young men at one another. The victory was really going to rest on who could do the best job of bringing up their kids to become efficient and effective soldiers. That's pretty grandiose, I guess, but I do think that, and thank God it's been the armies of democracy that have emerged from this as the triumphant armies. ~ Stephen Ambrose
Democracy quotes by Stephen Ambrose
It's very difficult to have any faith in the sincerity of the SLORC about stamping out drug production if they find it so easy to forgive a drug baron whom at one time they said they would never, never forgive and would never, never regard as anything but a drug runner. The SLORC is far more aggressive in its attitude toward the National League for Democracy than against drug traffickers. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi
Democracy quotes by Aung San Suu Kyi
We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view. ~ Asa Gray
Democracy quotes by Asa Gray
The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States ... ~ George Orwell
Democracy quotes by George Orwell
The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures ~ Walt Whitman
Democracy quotes by Walt Whitman
The rich will strive to establish their dominion and enslave the rest. They
always did ... they always will. They will have the same effect here as
elsewhere, if we do not, by the power of government, keep them in their proper
spheres. ~ Gouverneur Morris
Democracy quotes by Gouverneur Morris
A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press. ~ Thomas Hobbes
Democracy quotes by Thomas Hobbes
The many refugees are not a Greek or German problem. They are a European problem. We should therefore develop a common strategy. That's why I am launching a cross-border movement for more democracy. ~ Yanis Varoufakis
Democracy quotes by Yanis Varoufakis
If you give up on democracy, you might as well give up on everything. ~ Robert Reich
Democracy quotes by Robert Reich
The concept that all men are created equal was a key to European Enlightenment philosophy. But the interpretation of "all men" has hovered over the Declaration of Independence since its creation. ~ Oscar Auliq-Ice
Democracy quotes by Oscar Auliq-Ice
What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that's the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand. ~ Tony Blair
Democracy quotes by Tony Blair
As an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism. ~ Rose Wilder Lane
Democracy quotes by Rose Wilder Lane
Modern Western empires are different from empires of old as well as the Soviet empire of yesterday in one important respect: they combine a democratic political system at home with despotism abroad. Even in the German case, as Sheldon Wolin reminds us, Nazi terror was not applied to the population generally. So long as democracy is a living reality at home, democratic empires are potentially self-correcting. ~ Mahmood Mamdani
Democracy quotes by Mahmood Mamdani
Jazz is improvisation and syncopation, with resilience and flow, with earthy elegance, nuance and subtlety, with the integrity of individual expression within (usually) a group context, with true democracy in action. ~ Greg Thomas
Democracy quotes by Greg Thomas
Aristocracy naturally leads the human mind to the contemplation of the past, and fixes it there. Democracy, on the contrary, gives men a sort of instinctive distaste for what is ancient. In this respect aristocracy is far more favorable to poetry; for things commonly grow larger and more obscure as they are more remote; and, for this two-fold reason, they are better suited to the delineation of the ideal. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville
Democracy quotes by Alexis De Tocqueville
Oscar Wilde was born in Dublin, on the 15th October, 1856, so that he is now about twenty-six years of age, but brief as has been his career, it has been full of promise for the future. The son of highly intellectual parents, he has had an exceptional education, has travelled much in wild and remote, through classic lands, and in the course of these journeys has learnt to appreciate the beauties of the old authors, in whose works whilst at college he attained exceptional proficiency. But his naturally enthusiastic temperament teaches him to hope for better in the future than has been achieved in the past, and to see how vast will be the influence of Art and Literature on the coming democracy of Intellect, when education and culture shall have taught men to pride themselves on what they have done, and not alone on the deeds of their ancestors. ~ Walter Hamilton
Democracy quotes by Walter Hamilton
Socialism, Puritanism, Philistinism, Christianity - he saw them all as allotropic forms of democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of quantity against quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and enterprising, of the botched against the fit. ~ H.L. Mencken
Democracy quotes by H.L. Mencken
When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority. That mind is the special disease of democracy, as cruelty and servility are the special diseases of privileged societies. It will kill us all if it grows unchecked. The ~ C.S. Lewis
Democracy quotes by C.S. Lewis
And you know, we were talking about American identity, and where we've come from and where we are and where we're headed. We knew that we wanted to have a hopeful ending and we wanted it to be pro-community, and a pro-democracy type of movie. ~ Matt Damon
Democracy quotes by Matt Damon
The principle of democracy is freedom, the principle of war is discipline; each requires the absence of the other. ~ Will Durant
Democracy quotes by Will Durant
The return of democracy in our land has indeed thrown the problems of development into bolder relief. ~ Ibrahim Babangida
Democracy quotes by Ibrahim Babangida
The fight for truth ... is not just our right as free citizens of free societies. It is our duty as citizens of the earth. ~ Vandana Shiva
Democracy quotes by Vandana Shiva
She understood that for her to excel at Oxford she had to improve her English. Her brain was in need of words to express itself fully, the way a sapling was in need of raindrops to grow to its potential. She purchased stacks of coloured Post-it notes. On them she wrote the words she chanced upon, fell in love with and intended to use at the earliest opportunity -- just as every foreigner did, one way or another:
- Autotomy: The casting off of a body part by an animal in danger
- Cleft Stick (from Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings): To be in a difficult situation
- Rantipole (from the Legend of Sleepy Hollow): Wild, reckless, sometimes quarrelsome person.
In her first Political Philosophy essay, she wrote 'In Turkey, where daily politics is rantipole, each time the system is in a cleft stick, democracy is the first thing to be severed and sacrificed in an act of autotomy. ~ Elif Shafak
Democracy quotes by Elif Shafak
Democracy means that when there's a knock in the door at 3 am, it's probably the milkman. ~ Winston Churchill
Democracy quotes by Winston Churchill
We must remember that democracy works when given time to develop, mature and deliver. People must have access to information for informed debate. Government institutions must treat citizens fairly, and with dignity, while responding to their needs. ~ Atifete Jahjaga
Democracy quotes by Atifete Jahjaga
The fossil fuel industry commands outsize sway over U.S. politics, markets, and democracy. I knew these companies were formidable, but when I served on the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, I got a close up view of how the industry disregards government safeguards. ~ Frances Beinecke
Democracy quotes by Frances Beinecke
Democracy is fatal for the arts; it leads only to chaos or the achievement of new and lower common denominators of quality. ~ Walter Legge
Democracy quotes by Walter Legge
The successful politician owes his power to the fact that he moves within the accepted framework of thought, that he thinks and talks conventionally. It would be almost a contradiction in terms for a politician to be a leader in the field of ideas. His task in a democracy is to find out what the opinions held by the largest number are, not to give currency to new opinions which may become the majority view in some distant future. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek
Democracy quotes by Friedrich August Von Hayek
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. ~ Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Democracy quotes by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people. ~ Alan Moore
Democracy quotes by Alan Moore
One less desirable aspect of democracy is that it seems to require serious demonization of the enemy if the nation and public opinion are to be galvanized sufficiently to pay a serious price in blood or treasure at war. ~ Graham E. Fuller
Democracy quotes by Graham E. Fuller
In a democracy private citizens see a man of their own rank in life who becomes possessed of riches and power in a few years; this spectacle excites their surprise and envy, and they are led to inquire how the person who was yesterday very equal is today their ruler. To attribute his rise to his talents or his virtues is unpleasant; for it is tacitly to acknowledge that they are themselves less virtuous and less talented than he was. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville
Democracy quotes by Alexis De Tocqueville
Publicity has another social function. The fact that this function has not been planned as a purpose by those make and use publicity in no way lessens its significance. Publicity turns consumption into a substitute for democracy. ~ John Berger
Democracy quotes by John Berger
As Taiwan's friend and ally, I believe it is important for the United States to monitor the situation in the Taiwan Strait very carefully to help ensure Taiwan is not forced into a position which would endanger its freedom or its democracy. ~ Jim Costa
Democracy quotes by Jim Costa
I would go one step further and say that the willingness to challenge professional economists - and other experts - should be the foundation of democracy. When you think about it, if all we have to do is to listen to the experts, what is the point of having a democracy at all? Unless we want our societies to be run by a body of self-elected experts, we all have to learn economics and challenge professional economists ~ Ha-Joon Chang
Democracy quotes by Ha-Joon Chang
These women, genteel and beautiful, are the rebels who say no to the choices made by silly mothers, incompetent fathers (there are seldom any wise fathers in Austen's novels) and the rigidly orthodox society. They risk ostracism and poverty to gain love and companionship, and to embrace that elusive goal at the heart of democracy: the right to choose. ~ Azar Nafisi
Democracy quotes by Azar Nafisi
The most important element of democracy, I believe, is the protection of minorities. ~ Shahin Najafi
Democracy quotes by Shahin Najafi
When Communism fell in 1989, the temptation for Western commentators to gloat triumphantly proved irresistible. This, it was declared, marked the end of History. Henceforth, the world belonged to liberal capitalism – there was no alternative – and we would all march forward in unison towards a future shaped by peace, democracy and free markets. Twenty years on this assertion looks threadbare.

There can be no question that the fall of the Berlin Wall and the domino-like collapse of Communism states from the suburbs of Vienna to the shores of the Pacific marked a very significant transition: one in which millions of men and women were liberated from a dismal and defunct ideology and its authoritarian institutions. But no one could credibly assert that what replaced Communism was an era of idyllic tranquility. There was no peace in post-Communist Yugoslavia, and precious little democracy in any of the successor states of the Soviet Union.

As for free markets, they surely flourished, but it is not clear for whom. The West – Europe and the United States above all – missed a once-in-a-century opportunity to re-shape the world around agreed and improved international institutions and practices. Instead, we sat back and congratulated ourselves upon having won the Cold War: a sure way to lose the peace. The years from 1989 to 2009 were consumed by locusts. ~ Tony Judt
Democracy quotes by Tony Judt
By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek
Democracy quotes by Friedrich August Von Hayek
Patriotic societies seem to think that the way to educate school children in a democracy is to stage bigger and better flag-saluting. ~ S.I. Hayakawa
Democracy quotes by S.I. Hayakawa
Anybody," said Johnny, carried away by his personal dream of Democracy, "can ride in one of the hansom cabs, provided," he qualified, "they get the money. So you can see what a free country we got here."
"What's free about it if you have to pay?" asked Francie.
"It's free in this way: If you have the money you're allowed to ride in them no matter who you are. In the old countries, certain people aren't free to ride in them, even if they have the money. ~ Betty Smith
Democracy quotes by Betty Smith
I can think of few more worthy achievements than keeping a library alive and well for a century. As far as I am concerned, one of the absolute backbones of a free society and a democracy is the library offering access to a treasure house of information to all. ~ Gillian Roberts
Democracy quotes by Gillian Roberts
In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy. ~ George Washington
Democracy quotes by George Washington
Right to peace is more urgent for the countries where the pillars of democracy are rusted by corrosion and purchased by the dark powers of few corporates. ~ Amit Ray
Democracy quotes by Amit Ray
I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That's right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That's democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place. ~ George Bernard Shaw
Democracy quotes by George Bernard Shaw
When you can get others to admire your ideals and to want what you want, you do not have to spend as much on sticks and carrots to move them in your direction. Seduction is always more effective than coercion, and many values like democracy, human rights, and individual opportunities are deeply seductive. ~ Joseph S. Nye Jr.
Democracy quotes by Joseph S. Nye Jr.
The dictatorship is shut up, democracy is always concerned. ~ Woody Allen
Democracy quotes by Woody Allen
No America without democracy, no democracy without politics no politics without parties, no parties without compromise and moderation. ~ Clinton Rossiter
Democracy quotes by Clinton Rossiter
Globally, democracies have also acted in ways that suggest an outright renunciation of their principles at home. ~ Nayef Al-Rodhan
Democracy quotes by Nayef Al-Rodhan
Democracy has at least one merit, namely that a Member of Parliament cannot be stupider than his constituents, for the more stupid he is, the more stupid they were to elect him. ~ Bertrand Russell
Democracy quotes by Bertrand Russell
[John C.] Calhoun was a minority spokesman in a democracy, a particularist in an age of nationalism, a slaveholder in an age of advancing liberties, and an agrarian in a furiously capitalistic country. His weakness was to be inhumanly schematic and logical, which is only to say that he thought as he lived. His mind, in a sense, was too masterful - it imposed itself upon realities. The great human, emotional, moral complexities of the world escaped him because he had no private training for them, had not even the talent for friendship, in which he might have been schooled. It was easier for him to imagine, for example, that the South had produced upon its slave base a better culture than the North because he had no culture himself, only a quick and muscular mode of thought. It may stand as a token of Calhoun's place in the South's history that when he did find culture there, at Charleston, he wished a plague upon it. ~ Richard Hofstadter
Democracy quotes by Richard Hofstadter
Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be. ~ Colum McCann
Democracy quotes by Colum McCann
Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction. ~ C.V. Wedgwood
Democracy quotes by C.V. Wedgwood
Our children should learn the general framework of their government and then they should know where they come in contact with the government, where it touches their daily lives and where their influence is exerted on the government. It must not be a distant thing, someone else's business, but they must see how every cog in the wheel of a democracy is important and bears its share of responsibility for the smooth running of the entire machine. ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Democracy quotes by Eleanor Roosevelt
Any fool can blow something up. Any fool can destroy. But to see these guys, these firefighters and these policemen and people from all over the country, literally with buckets, rebuilding ... that's extraordinary. And that's why we have already won ... they can't ... it's light. It's democracy. They can't shut that down. ~ Jon Stewart
Democracy quotes by Jon Stewart
Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy. ~ Aristophanes
Democracy quotes by Aristophanes
I think that the future belongs to democracy, but not to capitalism, because they are opposite camps. ~ Ricardo Alarcon
Democracy quotes by Ricardo Alarcon
There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation. ~ W.C. Fields
Democracy quotes by W.C. Fields
I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~ Thomas Carlyle
Democracy quotes by Thomas Carlyle
Opening up a newspaper is the key to looking classy and smart. Never mind the bronze-plated stuff about the role of the press in a democracy - a newspaper, kiddo, is about Style. ~ Garrison Keillor
Democracy quotes by Garrison Keillor
America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard. ~ Mikhail Gorbachev
Democracy quotes by Mikhail Gorbachev
What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs. ~ Rex Stout
Democracy quotes by Rex Stout
Without a sharp turnaround toward democracy and equality in the United States, Europe will be virtually alone in its commitment to social democracy. The pressures of low-wage immigrant labor, cheap imports from Eastern Europe and Asia, and free-market practices of governments are already threatening once secure areas of employment and causing right-wing populism to pop up in various Western European countries. Surprising numbers of middle-class and working-class voters have supported ultranationalist, neofascist parties throughout Europe because, like white male workers in the United States, they see their status slipping. ~ Steve Brouwer
Democracy quotes by Steve Brouwer
Between democracy and rule of law There has always been a close historical association between the rise of democracy and the rise of liberal rule of law.32 As we saw in chapter 27, the rise of accountable government in England was inseparable from the defense of the Common Law. Extension of the rule of law to apply to wider circles of citizens has always been seen as a key component of democracy itself. This association has continued through the third-wave democratic transitions after 1975, where the collapse of Communist dictatorships led to both the rise of electoral democracy and the creation of constitutional governments protecting individuals' rights. ~ Francis Fukuyama
Democracy quotes by Francis Fukuyama
The boundaries of democracy have to be widened so as to include economic equality also. This is the great revolution through which we are all passing. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru
Democracy quotes by Jawaharlal Nehru
I have an intellectual inclination for democratic institutions, but I am instinctively an aristocrat, which means that I despise and fear the masses. I passionately love liberty, legality, the respect for rights, but not democracy ... liberty is my foremost passion. That is the truth. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville
Democracy quotes by Alexis De Tocqueville
The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe, ~ Mike Lofgren
Democracy quotes by Mike Lofgren
How do you cause people to believe in an imagined order such as Christianity, democracy or capitalism? First, you never admit that the order is imagined. ~ Yuval Noah Harari
Democracy quotes by Yuval Noah Harari
Canada does not just 'go along' in order to 'get along.' We will 'go along,' only if we 'go' in a direction that advances Canada's values: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law. ~ John Baird
Democracy quotes by John Baird
I have to give moral support to my supporters. If I'm not going to fight anymore, that might hurt the feelings of my supporters. They are fighting for democracy. They are fighting for the rule of law. ~ Thaksin Shinawatra
Democracy quotes by Thaksin Shinawatra
We don't need people who can spit back facts. We've got Google. ~ Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
Democracy quotes by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff
Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it. ~ Huey Newton
Democracy quotes by Huey Newton
I have great confidence in Taiwan's democracy. I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights, and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan. ~ Chen Shui-bian
Democracy quotes by Chen Shui-bian
All men know that by sheer weight of physical force, the mass of men must in the last resort become the arbiters of human action. But reason, skill, wealth, machines and power may for long periods enable the few to control the many. But to what end? The current theory of democracy is that dictatorship is a stopgap pending the work of universal education, equitable income, and strong character. But always the temptation is to use the stopgap for narrower ends, because intelligence, thrift and goodness seem so impossibly distant for most men. We rule by junta; we turn Fascist, because we do not believe in men; yet the basis of fact in this disbelief is incredibly narrow. We know perfectly well that most human beings have never had a decent human chance to be full men. Most of us may be convinced that even with opportunity the number of utter human failures would be vast; and yet remember that this assumption kept the ancestors of present white America long in slavery and degradation.

It is then one's moral duty to see that every human being, to the extent of his capacity, escapes ignorance, poverty and crime. With this high ideal held unswervingly in view, monarchy, oligarchy, dictatorships may rule; but the end will be the rule of All, if mayhap All or Most qualify. The only unforgivable sin is dictatorship for the benefit of Fools, Voluptuaries, gilded Satraps, Prostitutes and Idiots. The rule of the famished, unlettered, stinking mob is better than this and the on ~ W.E.B. Du Bois
Democracy quotes by W.E.B. Du Bois
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