Democracy Voting Quotes

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

When a stupid government is elected in a democratic country, the best thing about this is that you learn the number of stupid people in that country! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Being adequately informed is a democratic duty, just as the vote is a democratic right. A misinformed electorate, voting without knowledge, is not a true democracy. ~ Jay Griffiths

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. ~ Bill Vaughan

When I saw how the European Union was developing, it was very obvious what they had in mind was not democratic. In Britain, you vote for a government so the government has to listen to you, and if you don't like it you can change it. ~ Tony Benn

Though pundits and politicians, weary of the story, are happy to omit facts about voting systems and their private contractors running our public elections, such omissions impair voters and democracy itself. ~ Mimi Kennedy

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was indeed a vital instrument of democracy, ensuring the integrity and reliability of a democratic process that we as a Country hold so dear. ~ Charles B. Rangel

Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns. ~ Arlen Specter

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues. ~ Thomas L. Friedman

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders. ~ Walter Cronkite

I'd like people to be educated on the voting machines, making sure that our democracy isn't being hijacked by computer technology. There's no reason there can't be a paper trail on those machines. ~ Eddie Vedder

It makes people feel good to say that all opinions are equal, because somehow, they correlate equality of opinions with equality of human dignity. And that's exactly where lies one of the most disgraceful and harmful perceptual errors of the society, that leads to an unfit government. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Voting is the first duty of democracy. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

If voting doesn't change anything, it is just a drama of democracy. ~ Shesh Nath Vernwal

In a society where the majority choose charisma over character, democracy does more harm than good to the actual progress of that society ~ Abhijit Naskar

Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process. ~ Debbie Stabenow

Remember something, if you will, about voting: Voting is not a horse race, you're not going there thinking "Gee, I gotta pick the winner so I can brag to my friends 'Oh, I picked so-and-so and he or she won'". Voting is voting your heart and voting your conscience and when you've done that, don't ever, EVER let a Democrat or Republican tell you that you've wasted your vote because the fact is, if you DON'T vote your heart and conscience then you HAVE wasted your vote. ~ Jesse Ventura

All humans are equal, but not everyone has the mental capacity to decide what's best for harmony and progress of a people. ~ Abhijit Naskar

On my travels around the world, I've met people in countries where democracy doesn't exist and if it does, they are intimidated into voting in a certain way. ~ Ross Kemp

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues. ~ Howard Rheingold

Civic duty? Perhaps it would be a little naive to try to coerce me into voting. I assure you my basic standards of healthy living are very different from yours, which is the reason I do not vote. You should note that, as nonsensical a scenario, if forced to choose I would most definitely rather live in a failing, Christ-honoring, God-fearing nation than a flourishing one that mocks said Creator. Beware of my personal ambitions. ~ Criss Jami

If you rely on the media for your information, to educate yourself about the candidates and what issues are facing the country, then you get just part of the equation. I think it's important that we as citizens of this democracy take the responsibility to get as much information as possible before we go into the voting booth. ~ Donna Brazile

From this day onward whatever circumstances may jam my way I'll break through it unscathed for in the end who will but suffer but me, so much so that I will reach for the unreachable, I'll break that which is unbreakable and attain that is impossible! ~ Liliosa Hilao

Democracy is the most difficult of all forms of government, since it requires the widest spread of intelligence, and we forgot to make ourselves intelligent when we made ourselves sovereign. ~ Ariel Durant

Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury. ~ John Oliver

With a [democratic] government anyone in principle can become a member of the ruling class or even the supreme power. The distinction between the rulers and the ruled as well as the class consciousness of the ruled become blurred. The illusion even arises that the distinction no longer exists: that with a public government no one is ruled by anyone, but everyone instead rules himself. Accordingly, public resistance against government power is systematically weakened. While exploitation and expropriation before might have appeared plainly oppressive and evil to the public, they seem much less so, mankind being what it is, once anyone may freely enter the ranks of those who are at the receiving end. Consequently, [exploitation will increase], whether openly in the form of higher taxes or discretely as increased governmental money "creation" (inflation) or legislative regulation. ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe

Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism. ~ Arundhati Roy

Democracy is a cry of war; it is the flag of the party of numbers placed below raised against those above. A flag sometimes raised in the name of the rights of men, but sometimes in the name of crude passions; sometimes raised against the most iniquitous usurpations but also sometimes against legitimate superiority. ~ Francois Guizot

I think the American people should see that the corporations abandoned them long ago. That people will have to build their own economies and rebuild democracy as a living democracy. The corporations belong to no land, no country, no people. They have no loyalty to anything apart from their profits. And the profits today are on an unimaginable scale; it has become illegitimate, criminal profit - profits extracted at the cost of life. ~ Vandana Shiva

Because we don't have a Fairness Doctrine, and because we have further media consolidation, and because we have a craptastic corporate media, WE DON'T HAVE NEWS! We don't have an informed populous and we don't have a democracy ... Everyone in the world knows that America, (in its current state, because of right-wingers) that the right wing arm of this country (that speaks for this country unfortunately) has no credibility when it comes to human rights or independent media. ~ Janeane Garofalo

So in Asia I want to make - I want to succeed to make a model of what success, practicing democracy, and market economy. Then that will give a good influence over Asian countries. ~ Kim Dae-jung

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

Since 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women - two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians - have rendered the notion of "capitalist democracy" into an oxymoron. ~ Peter Thiel

but racism is about the power of a group and in America it's white folks who have that power. How? Well, white folks don't get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don't get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don't give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don't stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don't choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don't tell white kids that they're not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don't try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don't say they can't use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered "aspirational" by the "mainstream." So ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2014 Lok Sabha Elections is a battle between good governance agenda of the NDA versus the misgovernance and corruption of the UPA. ~ Narendra Modi

The ballot is stronger than the bullet. ~ Abraham Lincoln

[On Brazil:] In our country everything is weakening. The money is weak. Democracy is weak and the politicians are very weak. Everything that is weak dies one day. ~ Carolina Maria De Jesus

New possibilities for a more active democracy are beginning to emerge in the information age. Effective citizen action is possible if citizens develop the abilities to gain access to information of all kinds and the skills to put such information to effective use. ~ Harry Boyte

The fascist dictator declares that the masses of people are biologically inferior and crave authority, that basically, they are slaves by nature. Hence, a totalitarian authoritarian regime is the only possible form of government for such people. It is significant that all dictators who today plunge the world into misery stem from the suppressed masses of people. They are intimately familiar with this sickness on the part of masses of people. What they lack is an insight into natural processes and development, the will to truth and research, so that they are never moved by a desire to want to change these facts.

On the other hand, the formal democratic leaders made the mistake of assuming that the masses of people were automatically capable of freedom and thereby precluded every possibility of establishing freedom and self-responsibility in masses of people as long as they were in power. They were engulfed in the catastrophe and will never reappear.

Our answer is scientific and rational. It is based on the fact that masses of people are indeed incapable of freedom, but it does not - as racial mysticism does - look upon this incapacity as absolute, innate, and eternal. It regards this incapacity as the result of former social conditions of life and, therefore, as changeable. ~ Wilhelm Reich

There's a terrible danger in voting for the lesser of two evils because the parties can set it up that way. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

For you I am neither the PM or CM. Our bond is a bond of affection and I am your sevak. ~ Narendra Modi

Dr. King's leadership reaffirmed the promise of our democracy: that everyday people, working together, have the power to change our government and our institutions for the better. ~ Maria Cantwell

Disfranchisement is the deliberate theft and robbery of the only protection of poor against rich and black against white. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

All popular political doctrines charge your brain with various liberal ideas, such as respect for human rights and freedom, toleration, gender equality and so and so forth. However, in the political arena, a candidate with a charismatic personality in the eyes of the masses, has a great advantage over his opponents in political competition. If you want to become a likely winner, cultivate your charisma, make people believe in you and share your opinion, with no regard to what it is. Your victory depends more on your charisma than on the ideas that you follow. ~ Elmar Hussein

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

Greeks and Romans were anti-Mediterranean cultures, in the sense of being at odds with much of the political heritages of Persia, Egypt, and Phoenicia. While Hellenism was influenced - and enriched - at times by Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Persian art, literature, religion, and architecture, its faith in consensual government and free markets was unique. Greek and Latin words for "democracy," "republic," "city-state," "constitution," "freedom," "liberty," and "free speech" have no philological equivalents in other ancient languages of the Mediterranean (and few in the contemporary languages of the non-West as well). ~ Victor Davis Hanson

Read any of the top-selling business books, all of them talk about moving away from a top down manner of leading to a more inclusive one. It's not happening over night, but if you read the winds of change in most of the democracies in the world we are moving toward shared levels of power. ~ Elizabeth Lesser

When a plutocracy is disguised as a democracy, the system is beyond corrupt. ~ Suzy Kassem

The relations which exist between man and his Maker, and the duties resulting from those relations, are the most interesting and important to every human being and the most incumbent on his study and investigation. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Our alliances should be understood as a means to expand our influence, not as a constraint on our power. The expansion of democracy and freedom in the world should be a shared interest and value with all nations. ~ Chuck Hagel

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

We need the value and the beauty of democracy, and the beauty of pluralism is there's a free exchange of ideas. Nobody is right all the time. I'm not right all the time. I don't agree with anybody all the time, and I don't even agree with myself all the time. ~ Rick Warren

We need to remind our core supporters that we have not forgotten their concern with the way our democracy is being replaced by European bureaucracy in so many areas. ~ John Redwood

A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression. ~ Edward Gibbon

Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen. ~ John Ralston Saul

If you're fit and healthy and capable of mending a fence or stacking shelves, and you're not doing either of those things, then I say you don't get the right to vote. I don't want someone who's too lazy to get a job making decisions on how this country should be run. ~ Karl Wiggins

You have to be ready for anything. It's a good reminder about democracy. Voters can tell you to carry on, or chuck you out. You've got to be ready for both. ~ David Cameron

Words like "freedom," "justice," "democracy" are not common concepts; on the contrary, they are rare. People are not born knowing what these are. It takes enormous and, above all, individual effort to arrive at the respect for other people that these words imply. --"The Crusade of Indignation," in Nation ~ James Baldwin

Quite a few people have to believe something is normal before it becomes normal - a sort of 'voting' situation. But once the threshold is reached, then everyone demands to do whatever it is. ~ Alan Kay

This is an election of hope. It is bringing a new trust. These elections will give new strength to the nation. ~ Narendra Modi