Parliamentary Democracy Quotes

India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of their knowledge of parliamentary systems, parliamentary manners. They were big debaters. They [had], as it were, a long apprenticeship in training for being in power. Even when Gandhi made it a mass movement, the idea of elective representatives, elected working committees, elected leadership, all that stayed because basically Indians wanted to impress the British that they were going to be as good as the British were at running a parliamentary democracy. And that helped quite a lot. ~ Meghnad Desai

Parliamentary democracy is, in truth, little more than a means of securing a periodical change in the management team, which is then allowed to preside over a system that remains in essence intact. If the British people were ever to ask themselves what power they truly enjoyed under our political system they would be amazed to discover how little it is ~ Tony Benn

I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah ... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term. ~ Jim Bolger

Thus was parliamentary democracy finally interred in Germany. Except for the arrests of the Communists and some of the Social Democratic deputies, it was all done quite legally, though accompanied by terror. Parliament ~ William L. Shirer

Of course it isn't. It's just an arbitrary set of rules like chess or tennis or - what's that strange thing you British play?" "Er, cricket? Self-loathing?" "Parliamentary democracy. ~ Douglas Adams

It is not surprising that more and more people are coming to the conclusion that the ballot box is no longer an instrument that will secure political solutions ... They can see that the parliamentary democracy we boast of is becoming a sham. ~ Tony Benn

One of the most enjoyable things I do at Government House and when I travel around Australia is to talk with children. I tell them about our parliamentary democracy - and I often do that as I'm walking into an Executive Council meeting next door! ~ Quentin Bryce

In the election campaign of 1930, Hitler seldom spoke explicitly of Jews. The crude tirades of the early 1920s were missing altogether. 'Living-space' figured more prominently, posed against the alternative international competition for markets ... The key theme now was the collapse of Germany under parliamentary democracy and party government into a divided people with separate and conflicting interests, which only the NSDAP could overcome by creating a new unity of the nation, transcending class, estate and profession. ~ Ian Kershaw

We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy-the form of state suited to capitalism-and to the inevitable and 'natural' character of the most monstrous inequalities. ~ Alain Badiou

He can read and write, but he doesn't get what he's read. He's half-baked. The country is full of people like him, I'll tell you that. And we entrust our glourious parliamentary democracy ~ Aravind Adiga

Do go on,' he said. 'There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to a highly trained intelligence leapfrogging common sense and coming to the wrong conclusions. It gives me renewed faith in parliamentary democracy. ~ Tom Sharpe

Though we were all taught to be proud of living in this great parliamentary democracy the civil servants who ran it were a fearsome bunch - a nameless mass of people with jobs (police, social workers, record-keepers, teachers, councilmen) whose sole purpose was to keep everyone shuffling from birth to death in a nice orderly queue. Surely some social-service record had been passed to the local constabulary bearing a huge black question mark beside the name Finn and the scrawled words, Why isn't this boy in school ~ Meg Rosoff

Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change. Pluralist ~ Shashi Tharoor

Marriage is about compromising,' he told me. 'Families are about compromising, being anything other than a hermit is about compromising. Parliamentary democracy certainly is.' He snorted. 'Nothing but.' He drained his glass. 'You either learn to compromise or you resign yourself to shouting from the sidelines for the rest of your life.' He looked thoughtful. 'Or you arrange to become a dictator. There's always that, I suppose.' He shrugged. 'Not a great set of choices, really, but that's the price we pay for living together. And it's that or solitude. Then you really do become a wanker. Another drink? ~ Iain Banks

No matter how many troops we have in place or how long they stay, we cannot impose a parliamentary democracy there any more than the insurgents can impose a theocracy. ~ Nick Clooney

Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent social classes, a basic uniformity of interest throughout. ~ Learned Hand

The greatest lesson for democracies to learn is for the majority to give to the minority a full, free opportunity to present their side of the case, and then for the minority, having failed to win a majority to their views, gracefully to submit and to recognize the action as that of the entire organization, and cheerfully to assist in carrying it out until they can secure its repeal. ~ Henry Martyn Robert

I am not a Labor Leader; I do not want you to follow me or anyone else; if you are looking for a Moses to lead you out of this capitalist wilderness, you will stay right where you are. I would not lead you into the promised land if I could, because if I led you in, some one else would lead you out. You must use your heads as well as your hands, and get yourself out of your present condition; as it is now the capitalists use your heads and your hands. ~ Eugene V. Debs

A moral foreign policy means your positions on certain matters are clear no matter what, and that you won't forget about them when it's convenient. ~ Garry Kasparov

I think comedy and satire are a very important part of democracy, and it's important we are able to laugh at the idiosyncrasies or the follies or vanities of people in power. ~ Rory Bremner

Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone. ~ Rosa Luxemburg

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts ~ Woodrow Wilson

What I hear every day on talk radio is America's lack of education - and I don't mean lack of college degrees. I mean lack of the basic art of democracy, the ability to seek the great truths that can come only by synthesizing the small truths possessed by each of us. ~ Donella Meadows

European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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

To celebrate freedom and democracy while forgetting American's origins in a slavery economy is patriotism à la carte. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed ~ Lee Harvey Oswald

As the consumer is the public general, without distinction of rank or fortune, the free market is the most obvious expression of the sovereignty of the people and the best guarantee of democracy. ~ Faustino Ballve

(Tradition) is the democracy of the dead. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships. ~ Tom Tancredo

Meiklejohn's position is that free speech in a democracy is not an absolute flowing from the boundless source of some presumed 'natural right.' It is a practical necessity of 'self-government by universal suffrage,' for if the citizens are not permitted to argue out the issues of government, how can they be what they must be in a democracy - the rulers as well as the ruled? ~ Max Lerner

When people generally are aware of a problem, it can be said to have entered the public consciousness. When people get on their hind legs and holler, the problem has not only entered the public consciousness
it has also become a part of the public conscience. At that point, things in our democracy begin to hum. ~ Hubert H. Humphrey

In democracy, nobody is above anybody else apart from he who is elected by the people. ~ Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy. ~ Aristotle.

Why did she want to stay in England? Because the history she was interested in had happened here, and buried deep beneath her analytical mind was a tumbled heap of Englishness in all its glory, or kings and queens, of Runnymede and Shakespeare's London, of hansom cabs and Sherlock Holmes and Watson rattling off into the fog with cries of 'The game's afoot,' of civil wars bestrewing the green land with blood, of spinning jennies and spotted pigs and Churchill and his country standing small and alone against the might of Nazi Germany. It was a mystery to her how this benighted land had produced so many great men and women, and ruled a quarter of the world and spread its language and law and democracy across the planet. ~ Elizabeth Aston

The voice of the people may be said to be God's voice, the voice of the Panchayat. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy. ~ Robert Kennedy

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. ~ Richard Aldington

Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order. ~ Ilka Chase

Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded. ~ Nelson Mandela

High school is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship - nor, contrary to popular belief, an anarchic state. High school is a divine-right monarchy. And when the queen goes on vacation, things change. ~ John Green

In our democracy we must have a partnership of labor, of business and of government. ~ Charles H. Percy

The first and most important thing to understand about politics is this: forget Right, Left, Center, socialism, fascism, or democracy. Every government that exists - or ever existed, or ever will exist - is a kleptocracy, meaning "rule by thieves." Competing ideologies merely provide different excuses to separate the Productive Class from what they produce. ~ L. Neil Smith

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy... ~ Alexander Fraser Tytler

Democracy will defeat the economist at every turn on its own genre. ~ Harold Innis

Remember, the Islamist view of democracy is: one man, one vote, one election, and that's it. ~ John Fund

One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption. ~ Upton Sinclair

Even a thousand bigoted presidents with all the armed forces in the world would turn powerless in front of a hundred conscientious citizens hell-bent on justice. ~ Abhijit Naskar

If you want to know the real reasons why certain politicians vote the way they do - follow the money. Arch Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg (a.k.a. JackOff Grease-Smug) stands to make billions via his investment firm - Somerset Capital Management - if the UK crashes unceremoniously out of the European Union without a secure future trade deal. Why ? Because proposed EU regulations will give enforcement agencies greater powers to curb the activities adopted by the sort of off-shore tax havens his company employs. Consequently the British electorate get swindled not once, but twice. Firstly because any sort of Brexit - whether hard, soft, or half-baked - will make every man, woman and child in the UK that much poorer than under the status quo currently enjoyed as a fully paid up member of the EU. Secondly because Rees-Mogg's company, if not brought to heel by appropriate EU wide legislation, will deprive Her Majesty's Treasury of millions in taxes, thus leading to more onerous taxes for the rest of us. It begs the question, who else in the obscure but influential European Research Group (ERG) that he chairs and the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA) that he subscribes to, have similar vested interests in a no-deal Brexit ? It is high time for infinitely greater parliamentary and public scrutiny into the UK Register of Members' Financial Interests in order to put an end to these nefarious dealings and appalling double standards in public life which only serve to further corrode public ~ Alex Morritt

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people ... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie ... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us. ~ Jim Hightower

Our labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor. ~ John F. Kennedy

During most of the Bush administration, human rights and democracy in Egypt were on the front burner. ~ Elliott Abrams

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

Justice delayed is democracy denied. ~ John F. Kennedy

It is not quite correct that a higher rate of participation is always favourable for democracy…. A growth in the rate of participation can indicate a weakening of social cohesion which will lead democracy to its death; inversely, the widespread opinion that 'voting can't change much', by diminishing participation, can contribute to the stability of the regime. ~ Gilles Châtelet

The word democracy comes from the Greek and means, literally, government by the people. ~ Robert W. Welch, Jr.

There is an old saying that the course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that education wins the race. ~ John F. Kennedy

I am a hero! Are you?" - Chris ~ Yanan Melo

It has long been presumed that the diversity of constitutional forms makes for an optimal result. In reality, it creates a system of impediments that makes popular reform nearly impossible.
As with Polybius and Cicero, so with Aristotle, and so with the framers of the United States Constitution in 1787 . . . - all have been mindful of the leveling threats of democratic forces and the need for a constitutional "mix" that allows only limited participation by the demos, with a dominant role allotted to an elite executive power. . . . Diluting democratic power with a preponderantly undemocratic mix does not create an admirable "balance" and "stability." In actual practice, the diversity of form more often has been a subterfuge, allowing an appearance of popular participation in order to lend legitimacy to oligarchic dominance. ~ Michael Parenti

I think it's hard to learn democracy when we make children prisoners until they're nineteen years old. ~ Mimsy Sadofsky

[The Internet] affects democracy ... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy. ~ Lawrence Lessig