Democratic Government Quotes

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government. ~ Fidel Castro

The tow pillars of democratic government are the primacy of the law and the budget. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Popular and democratic government is the only constitution which suits France, and all those who are worthy of the name of men. ~ Camille Desmoulins

Authoritarianism is not pretending anymore to be a real alternative to democracy, but we can see many more authoritarian practices and styles basically being smuggled into democratic governments. ~ Ivan Krastev

People everywhere do not concern themselves much beyond the common round of everyday, and this is the chief problem for a democratic government, whose success depends upon an informed and responsible citizenry. ~ Pearl S. Buck

I believe I have demonstrated that the voters are characteristically ill-informed when voting on reducing social costs. Furthermore, their primary concern is with wealth transferred to themselves, rather than with social cost efficiency. Logically, this would mean that democratic government would be inefficient in reducing social costs. ~ Gordon Tullock

A politician in our democratic government is a broker for the use of government force to the highest bidders. ~ Erne Lewis

From October 2003, I uncovered the following quote, which fully expressed the climate of fear of the time ---

"Any democratic government, whether threatened by real or perceived enemies, can succumb to Fascism if its people permit the slow or precipitate undoing, by executive or legislative fiat, of their civil liberties. ~ Irwin Hood Hoover

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

When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame. ~ Jack Kemp

Any democratic government, whether threatened by real or perceived enemies, can succumb to Fascism if its people permit the slow or precipitate undoing, by executive or legislative fiat, of their civil liberties.
― W R Montgomery (October 2003) ~ W R Montgomery

The success of totalitarian movements among the masses meant the end of two illusions of democratically ruled countries in general and of European nation-states and their party system in particular. The first was that the people in its majority had taken an active part in government and that each individual was in sympathy with one's own or somebody else's party. On the contrary, the movements showed that the politically neutral and indifferent masses could easily be the majority in a democratically ruled country, that therefore a democracy could function according to rules which are actively recognized by only a minority. The second democratic illusion exploded by the totalitarian movements was that these politically indifferent masses did not matter, that they were truly neutral and constituted no more than the inarticulate backward setting for the political life of the nation. Now they made apparent what no other organ of public opinion had ever been able to show, namely, that democratic government had rested as much on the silent approbation and tolerance of the indifferent and inarticulate sections of the people as on the articulate and visible institutions and organizations of the country. Thus when the totalitarian movements invaded Parliament with their contempt for parliamentary government, they merely appeared inconsistent: actually, they succeeded in convincing the people at large that parliamentary majorities were spurious and did not necessarily correspond to the ~ Hannah Arendt

When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing. You have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all of society. ~ Edward Brooke

It is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. ~ Friedrich August Von Hayek

Famines are easy to prevent if there is a serious effort to do so, and a democratic government, facing elections and criticisms from opposition parties and independent newspapers, cannot help but make such an effort. Not surprisingly, while India continued to have famines under British rule right up to independence ... they disappeared suddenly with the establishment of a multiparty democracy and a free press. ... a free press and an active political opposition constitute the best early-warning system a country threaten by famines can have ~ Amartya Sen

I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time. ~ H.L. Mencken

When people become more reliant on multinational corporations than on their own communities, they surrendered whatever say they had in their government. Corporations are growing stronger while democratic government becomes increasingly helpless. ~ Daniel Suarez

Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it ...
In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did. ~ Howard Zinn

Everything I read about the Swedish Social Democratic government of the last century suggested an organization that was driven by one single, overarching goal: to sever the traditional, some would say natural, ties between its citizens, be they those that bound children to their parents, workers to their employers, wives to their husbands, or the elderly to their families. ~ Michael Booth

If when I die, I am still a dictator, I will certainly go down into the oblivion of all dictators. If, on the other hand, I succeed in establishing a truly stable foundation for a democratic government, I will live forever in every home in China. ~ Chiang Kai-shek

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? ~ Jeffrey Dhywood

Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality. ~ Nelson Mandela

Democratic government is no longer an exercise of arbitrary authority from one above, but is an organization for public service of the people themselves--or will be when it is really attained.

In this change government ceases to be compulsion, and becomes agreement; law ceases to be authority and becomes co-ordination. When we learn the rules of whist or chess we do not obey them because we fear to be punished if we don't, but because we want to play the game. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The state's case against Smith, however, did claim to speak to his actual guilt or innocence, and it has to be considered carefully. The reason this is important has nothing to do with Roy Smith or Bessie Goldberg or even Al DeSalvo; they're all dead. In some ways there is nothing less relevant than an old murder case. The reason it is important is this: Here is a group of people who have gathered to judge--and possibly execute--a fellow citizen. It's the highest calling there is, the very thing that separates us from social anarchy, and it has to be done well. A trial, however, is just a microcosm of the entire political system. When a democratic government decides to raise taxes or wage war or write child safety laws, it is essentially saying to an enormous jury, "This is our theory of how the world works, and this is our proposal for dealing with it. If our theory makes sense to you, vote for us in the next election. If it doesn't, throw us out." The ability of citizens to scrutinize the theories insisted on by their government is their only protection against abuse of power and, ultimately, against tyranny. If ordinary citizens can't coolly and rationally evaluate a prosecutor's summation in a criminal trial, they won't have a chance at calling to task a deceitful government. And all governments are deceitful--they're deceitful because it's easier than being honest. Most of the time, it's no more sinister than that. ~ Sebastian Junger

Although the Civil War was an apocalyptic success in the sense that it brought an end to nearly a century of struggle and broken hopes regarding the ultimate extinction of African American slavery, it also combined new freedoms, as in other major revolutions, with shock, breakdown, trauma, and tragedy. Neither desired nor accurately anticipated by leaders in the North and South, the war dramatized the failure of the whole American system of political negotiation and compromise that had never weakened the institution of slavery but had supported democratic government for whites for over eighty years. < ... > Moreover, the long-term outcome of this revolutionary decision would be determined within a context of sectional hate and bitterness, political revenge, and competing presssures for reconciliation, reunion, and forgiveness. ~ David Brion Davis

I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government. ~ Lincoln Steffens

When you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damned secret, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix. ~ Harry S. Truman

Well, we're [USA] not looking for an ally; what we're looking for is a stable, democratic government that is not beholden to anyone in the region and is able to be secure within its own borders and have its own policy. ~ Joe Biden

The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory. ~ Victor Davis Hanson

As long term institutions, I am totally against dictatorships. But a dictatorship may be a necessary system for a transitional period. [...] Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism. My personal impression – and this is valid for South America – is that in Chile, for example, we will witness a transition from a dictatorial government to a liberal government. ~ Friedrich A. Hayek

What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally. ~ Walter Lippmann

A government has the duty to preserve the order as well as the truth which it represents; when a Gnostic leader appears and proclaims that God or progress, race or dialectic, has ordained him to become the existential ruler, a government is not supposed to betray its trust and to abdicate. And this rule suffers no exception for governments which operate under a democratic constitution and a bill of rights. Justice Jackson in his dissent in the Terminiello case formulated the point: the Bill of Rights is not a suicide pact. A democratic government is not supposed to become an accomplice in its own overthrow by letting Gnostic movements grow prodigiously in the shelter of a muddy interpretation of civil rights; and if through inadvertence such a movement has grown to the danger point of capturing existential representation by the famous "legality" of popular elections, a democratic government is not supposed to bow to the "will of the people" but to put down the danger by force and, if necessary, to break the letter of the constitution in order to save its spirit. ~ Eric Voegelin

Yet every democratic government is reluctant to face the fact. Reservists and citizen-soldiers stand ready, in every free nation, to stand to the colors and die in holocaust, the big war. Reservists and citizen-soldiers remain utterly reluctant to stand and die in anything less. None want to serve on the far frontiers, or to maintain lonely, dangerous vigils on the periphery of Asia. There has been every indication that mass call-ups for cold war moves may result in mass disaffection. ~ T.R. Fehrenbach

Our democracy should aspire to be more democratic. ~ DaShanne Stokes

In fact, after living in Communist China for so many years, I realized that one of the advantages enjoyed by a democratic government that allows freedom of speech is that the government knows exactly who supports it and who is against it, while a totalitarian government knows nothing of what the people really think.
~pg 55 ~ Nien Cheng

Democracy is essentially a means, a utilitarian device for safeguarding internal peace and individual freedom. As such it is by no means infallible or certain. Nor must we forget that there has often been much more cultural and spiritual freedom under an autocratic rule than under some democracies and it is at least conceivable that under the government of a very homogeneous and doctrinaire majority democratic government might be as oppressive as the worst dictatorship. ~ Friedrich Hayek

To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states. ~ George Soros

Just as democratic government cannot be condemned because of errors and even crimes committed by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not be condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional trade-union leaders. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Athens' biggest worry was the sheer recklessness of its own democratic government. A simple majority of the citizenry, urged on and incensed by clever demagogues, might capriciously send out military forces in unnecessary and exhausting adventures. ~ Thucydides

The work of democratic government is routinely concerned with matters defined as troubles. In "The Presidency and the Press" I make the point, familiar to anyone who has flown about the world much, that the best quick test of the political nature of a regime is to read the local papers on arrival. If they are filled with bad news, you have landed in a libertarian society of some sort. If, on the other hand, the press is filled with good news, it is a fair bet that the jails will be filled with good men. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending. ~ Milton Friedman

The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government. ~ Fidel Castro

Defeatism about the feasibility of plans for disarmament and ordered peace has been the most calamitious of all the errors made by democratic governments in modern times. ~ Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker

Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. (for democracy) In Britain, the road to (democratic government) took seven centuries to traverse . ~ Jeane Kirkpatrick

A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government. ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

As the Iraqi people better understand that Saddam Hussein and his regime are history, it is my hope that they will get behind the coalition effort to help them create a democratic government and rebuild their country. ~ Pete Domenici

In order to continue in office, any government (not simply a 'democratic' government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. ~ Murray Rothbard

Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly. ~ Vaclav Havel

Christians today should never claim that democracy is the Christian form of government, but we can and should claim that biblical principles fit better with democratic government than with existing alternatives. In addition, Christian virtues--honesty, tolerance, love for neighbor--strengthen democratic life. Therefore Christians should actively nurture democracy in their own countries and around the world. ~ Ronald J. Sider

A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect. ~ James Bovard

To take an analogy: if we say that a democratic government is the best kind of government, we mean that it most completely fulfills the highest function of a government - the realisation of the will of the people. ~ John Drinkwater

Freedom can never be completely safeguarded by rules and laws. It is as much dependent on the courage, integrity, and responsibility of each of us as it is on these qualities in those who govern. Every trait in us and our leaders which points to passive submission to mere power betrays democratic freedom. In our American system of democratic government, three different powerful branches serve to check each other, the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary. Yet when there is no will to prevent encroachment of the power of one by any of the others, this system of checks, too, can degenerate. ~ Joost A.M. Meerloo

The purpose of a democratic government is to protect the poor from the rich. The purpose of religion is to protect the rich from the poor. ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

In his conception of science's method and role, then, Descartes openly followed the style of the Renascence despot; he preferred absolute government, with its Procrustean simplifications, to democratic government, with its divided powers, its tenacious traditions, its embarrassing historic contradictions, its confusion and compromises and obscurities. But the acceptance of the latter is in fact the necessary price for a method capable of embracing the complexities of life without leaving any function or purpose unrecognized, uncounted, or uncared for. By his penchant for political absolutism Descartes paved the way for the eventual militarization of both science and technics. ~ Lewis Mumford

The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials. ~ Thomas Frank

The political, economic, social, and cultural realities in the early twenty-first century, as compared to the late 1960s may differ in detail, but the over-all progressive-socialist-marxist goal of transforming American culture and destroying the existing form of constitutional democratic government from within remains unchanged. ~ Robert Chandler

In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God. ~ George F. Will

So long as the international community consists of sovereign states, war between them remains a possibility, of which all governments have to take reasonable account. ~ Michael Howard

President Reagan was elected on the promise of getting government off the backs of the people and now he demands that government wrap itself around the waists of the people. ~ Ralph Nader

You don't grow the economy by growing government. ~ Robert Metcalfe

Take Hispanic voters. They favor Democrats because they like the party's programs, from health care reform to government spending on education. It's not because the Republicans don't have a big enough Office of Hispanic Outreach. ~ Gail Collins

The idea that government can instruct private enterprise on how to eliminate waste is preposterous. ~ James Cook

Direct democracy is lazy anarchy, for people who don't want to be governed but are too lazy to govern themselves. They want participation served to them. ~ Heather Marsh

The real issue is control. The Internet is too widespread to be easily dominated by any single government. By creating a seamless global economic zone, anti-sovereign and unregulatable, the Internet calls into question the very idea of a nation-state. ~ John Perry Barlow

Why is our (US) government the only one in the civilized world with a stupid, short-term energy policy? Why do our elected officials consider a European or Japanese-type energy tax not only unpassable but undiscussable? ~ Donella Meadows

I am apprehensive, therefore - perhaps too apprehensive - that the Government of these States may in futures times end in a monarchy. But this catastrophe, I think, may be long delayed, if in our proposed system we do not sow the seeds of contention, faction, and tumult, by making our posts of honor places of profit. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Access to governance has to be guaranteed with transparent systems that deliver responses and outcomes. The strengthening of democratic governance empowers the population to become active partners in the growth process. ~ Narendra Modi

His experience with Household Finance had disabused him of any hope that the government would intercede to prevent rich corporations from doing bad things to poor people. ~ Michael Lewis

Government has been a fossil: it should be a plant. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is plain, therefore, that if, when the Constitution says treason, it means treason - treason in fact, and nothing else - there is no ground at all for pretending that the Southern people have committed that crime. But if, on the other hand, when the Constitution says treason, it means what the Czar and the Kaiser mean by treason, then our government is, in principle, no better than theirs; and has no claim whatever to be considered a free government. ~ Lysander Spooner

If I were afraid of polls, I never would've been elected in two landslide elections, leading a highest percentage in our state's last election for governor. If I were afraid of polls, we wouldn't have privatized our charity hospital system, we wouldn't cut our state budget 26%, wouldn't have cut over 30,000 state government bureaucrats, wouldn't have done statewide school choice. Here's the real record. ~ Bobby Jindal

The British government is a murder machine, ~ Peter King

Government is essentially the negation of liberty. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Freedom itself demands discomfort. It demands dissatisfaction. Because the freer a society becomes, the more each person will be forced to reckon and compromise with views and lifestyles and ideas that conflict with their own. The lower our tolerance for pain, the more we indulge in fake freedoms, the less we will be able to uphold the virtues necessary to allow a free, democratic society to function. ~ Mark Manson

The [Oregon] Journal in its head and heart will stand for the people, be truly Democratic and free from political entanglements and machinations, believing in the principles that promise the greatest good to the greatest number-to ALL MEN, regardless of race, creed or previous condition of servitude ... It will be a fair newspaper, not a dull and selfish sheet ... ~ Samuel L. Jackson

WEATHER, n. The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up of official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle. ~ Ambrose Bierce

No government is lawful or innocent that does not recognize the moral law as the only universal law, and God as the Supreme Lawgiver and Judge, to whom nations in their national capacity, as well as individuals, are amenable. ~ Charles Grandison Finney

I want to assure you that working in transition period is an ungrateful job for any honest government. ~ Robert Kocharian

Revealingly, the central function of the Constitution as law
the supreme law
was to impose limitations not on the behavior of ordinary citizens but on the federal government. The government, and those who ran it, were not placed outside the law, but expressly targeted by it. Indeed, the Bill of Rights is little more than a description of the lines that the most powerful political officials are barred from crossing, even if they have the power to do so and even when the majority of citizens might wish them to do so. ~ Glenn Greenwald

If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty. ~ Jonah Goldberg

It is known, among coppers and criminals alike, that society can be policed only because it consents. When the burden of law or government is too great, or too oppressive, or when economic need or famine breaks the normal course of life, there simply are not – can never be – enough coppers to hold the line. ~ Nick Harkaway

State constitutions typically provide that the state first has to service its debt, then make it pension payments, and then pay for services. What we don't know is whether that order will be enforced. And ultimately, the busted state is going to be looking to the federal government for a bailout. Think Greece, but on a much bigger scale. ~ Eugene Fama

Ever occur to you why some of us can be this much concerned with animals suffering? Because government is not. Why not? Animals don't vote. ~ Will Harvey

My opinion is the greatest reward that any government could get is the approval of the people. If the people are happy and the people are at peace and the government has done something for them, that's the greatest reward I think any government could hope for. ~ Aung San Suu Kyi

A breath of laughter will blow a Government out of existence in Paris much more effectually than a whiff of cannon-smoke ~ Robert Barr

It was hard to believe. The entire government, gone like that. How did they get in, how did it happen? That was when they suspended the Constitution. ~ Margaret Atwood

He's a lovely guy, but there's no spark between us whatsoever. It just goes to show, that even with all their fancy assessment tools, the government can't legislate for chemistry. ~ Siobhan Davis

Once a person becomes a government dependent, his moral standing to resist the expansion of government power is fatally compromised. ~ James Bovard