Seeds Of Democracy Quotes

The administration often used the analogy of planting the "seeds of democracy" in the Middle East, as if they'd sprout into democratic regimes as nature took its course. Democracy doesn't sprout like apple trees. Scattering the seeds isn't enough, no matter how many soldiers do it. To continue with the gardening analogy the Bush administration seemed to love (there were also many "seeds of terror" and "seeds of hope"), democracy is more like a fragile flower that requires constant attention and the right soil. Dictatorships and fascist regimes are hardy weeds that sprout on their own. ~ Richard Engel

The Right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society. ~ Thomas I. Emerson

Citizen involvement in democracy triggers criticism and creative attitude, the spirit of competition and transparency as well. This is the dynamic of life that must be confronted, a continuous process of improvement towards better quality of democracy, governance and stronger nation. Neutrality may not make you dizzy, and also nurture your apathetic attitude and skip an opportunity to participate and contribute to change, no matter how small it is. ~ Toba Beta

The running pants were tolerable, Drustan decided, relieved. The blue trews had clearly been a torture device and would have strangled a man's seed. Mayhap men were fashioned differently in her time. He hadn't seen one other bulge out there on the street; mayhap they all had wee carrots in their trews. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Being a mother is like being a gardener of souls. You tend your children, make sure the light always touches them; you nourish them. You sow your seeds, and reap what you sow. ~ Karen White

When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self evident lie" The fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day-for burning fire-crackers!!! ~ Abraham Lincoln

Whoever wants to reach socialism by any other path than that of political democracy will inevitably arrive at conclusions that are absurd and reactionary both in the economic and the political sense. ~ Vladimir Lenin

There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humor. It is naked noise and naked malice. ~ Mervyn Peake

We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis. ~ Saul Alinsky

The people who lead us are of us. We put them in office and we can take them out. America proves that the people can govern themselves. ~ Keith Ellison

Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world. ~ Mark McKinnon

As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences. ~ Eugene McCarthy

The Beloved is inside you and also inside me. You know the tree is hidden inside the seed. Let your arrogance go. None of us has gone far. Inside love there is more power than we realize. ~ Kabir

It was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America – an idea about the way people should govern themselves. Some people make the mistake of calling that idea 'democracy' and imagining that any country can adopt it merely by holding elections. In reality, democracy was the capstone of an edifice that had as its foundation the rule of law – to be precise, the sanctity of individual freedom and the security of private property rights, ensured by representative, constitutional government. ~ Niall Ferguson

I like it too," Angelo said. "I love this country. Much you and anybody, and you know it."

"I know it," Prew said.

"But I still hate this country. You love the Army. But I dont love the Army. This country's Army is why I hate this country. What did this country ever do for me? Gimme a right to vote for men I cant elect? You can have it. Gimme a right to work at a job I hate? You can have that too. Then tell I'm a Citizen of the greatest richest country on earth, if I dont believe it look at Park Avenue. Carnival prizes. All carnival prizes. [..] They shouldnt teach their immigrants' kids all about democracy unless they mean to let them have a little bit of it, it ony makes for trouble. Me and the United States is dissociating our alliance as of right now, until the United States can find time to read its own textbooks a little."

Prew thought, a little sickly, of the little book, The Man Without A Country that his mother used to read to him so often, and how the stern patriotic judge condemned the man to live on a warship where no one could ever mention home to him the rest of his whole life, and how he had always felt that pinpoint of pleased righteous anger at seeing the traitor get what he deserved. ~ James Jones

Only together do Europe and the U.S. stand a chance of keeping liberal democracy as the central doctrine for organizing world affairs. ~ Victor Ponta

Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction. ~ C.V. Wedgwood

The process of democracy is one of change. Our laws are not frozen into immutable form, they are constantly in the process of revision in response to the needs of a changing society. ~ Thurgood Marshall

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. H. L. MENCKEN ~ Frank Luntz

The law of all modern states takes account of associations, whose members, in theory, pursue the common end with equal zeal. The experience of all associations proves, however, that this is not the case, and that a lively, constant and vigorous awareness of the end is found only in a minority of the associates; an association is really rather like a comet - a large tail of docile followers dragged along by a small dynamic head. ~ Bertrand De Jouvenel

Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell. ~ Plato

The key to all aristeia and wisdom and gnosis is a seed that conformist and mediocritist and democratist Americans haven't got even a scintilla of a prospect of nourishing, and that is sapere aude: DARE TO BE WISE. ~ Kenny Smith

The Western democracy of today is the forerunner of Marxism which without it would not be thinkable. It provides this world plague with the culture in which its germs can spread. ~ Adolf Hitler

The only social change presented by most SF has been towards authoritarianism, the domination of ignorant masses by a powerful elite - sometimes presented as a warning, but often quite complacently. Socialism is never considered as an alternative, and democracy is quite forgotten. Military virtues are taken as ethical ones. Wealth is assumed to be a righteous goal and a personal virtue. Competitive free-enterprise capitalism is the economic destiny of the entire Galaxy. In general, American SF has assumed a permanent hierarchy of superiors and inferiors, with rich, ambitious, aggressive males at the top, then a great gap, and then at the bottom the poor, the uneducated, the faceless masses, and all the women. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Within every setback or obstacle or disadvantage there is the seed of an equal or opposite or greater advantage or benefit. ~ Napoleon Hill

Integrate at least three of these items into your daily diet to be sure you are eating plenty of whole food. 1. Beans - all kinds: black beans, pinto beans, garbanzo beans, black-eyed peas, lentils 2. Greens - spinach, kale, chards, beet tops, fennel tops 3. Sweet potatoes - don't confuse with yams. 4. Nuts - all kinds: almonds, peanuts, walnuts, sunflower seeds, Brazil nuts, cashews 5. Olive oil - green, extra-virgin is usually the best. Note that olive oil decomposes quickly, so buy no more than a month's supply at a time. 6. Oats - slow-cook or Irish steel-cut are best. 7. Barley - either in soups, as a hot cereal, or ~ Dan Buettner

If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you. ~ Timothy Garton Ash

I envision a day when every city and town has front and back yards, community gardens and growing spaces, nurtured into life by neighbors who are no longer strangers, but friends who delight in the edible rewards offered from a garden they discovered together. Imagine small strips of land between apartment buildings that have been turned into vegetable gardens, and urban orchards planted at schools and churches to grow food for our communities. The seeds of the urban farming movement already are growing within our reality. ~ Greg Peterson

In a democracy such as ours the leading minds seldom achieve a place of permanent influence. And the men who sit in Congress or even in the White House are usually not our leading minds. They are not the thinkers. Still less have they time for reflection ... ~ Pearl S. Buck

The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn't seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer. ~ Peter Wessel Zapffe

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. ~ Walt Whitman

We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights. ~ William Hague

I believe in the greatness of our democracy. ~ Chen Shui-bian

Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal. ~ Chester Himes

As the shell, the pith and the kernel of the fruit are all produced form one parent seed of the tree, so from the one Lord is produced the whole of creation, animate and inanimate, spiritual and material. ~ Ramakrishna