Democracies Have Quotes

I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.

The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain.

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.

I donВ’t think that India is much celebrated for its democracy. Democracy has been a very neglected commodity at home and abroad.

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

Taiwan’s democracy has grown very fast and we enjoy a certain degree of freedom, as other developed democracies like the United States.

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.

Democracy has many definitions, but what’s in it for me is not an element of any of them.

That’s what American democracy has come down to at these town hall meetings: old people and gun nuts, which is a terrible combination. I heard somebody yell ‘AK-47!’ and a lady yelled, ‘Bingo!’

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.

Democracy needs support and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies. Democratic nations should come together in an association designed to help each other and promote what is a universal value – democracy.

Everybody’s for democracy in principle. It’s only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.

Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

There’s no doubt that in the last two to three decades, American democracy has been hacked. It was based on the regular harvesting of the wisdom of crowds, but now big sources of special interest money are able to prevent the passage of almost any meaningful reform that’s aimed at the public interest.

Nor is the people’s judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.

Advocating democracy has, by other people, often been taken as a form of imperialism, and not without some justification. So the important thing in a democracy is that it doesn’t necessarily have to agree with what America’s interests are, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be serving American interests.

The dream of democracy has long been enshrined in the hearts of the Egyptian people. It only needed awakening.

And I don’t see that popular measures, self-abnegation and democracy have done anything for Man but push him further into the mud. Currently, popularity endorses degraded novels, self-abnegation has filled the Southeast Asian jungles with stone idols and corpses, and democracy has given us inflation and income tax.

Education is a human right with immense power to transform

One faith, one law and one standard of justice did not mean democracy. The heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state . . . Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.

The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.

That kind of skeptical, questioning, “don’t accept what authority tells you” attitude of science – is also nearly identical to the attitude of mind necessary for a functioning democracy. Science and democracy have very consonant values and approaches, and I don’t think you can have one without the other.

The struggle for democracy has to be maintained on as many fronts as culture has aspects: political, economic, international, educational, scientific and artistic, religious.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.

Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.

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.

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

It would perhaps be as well if things were to remain quiet for a few years yet, so that all this 1848 democracy has time to rot away.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

No democracy has ever long survived the failure of its adherents to be ready to die for it. My own conviction is this, the people must either go on or go under.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

Democracy has no convictions for which people would be willing to stake their lives.

Our democracy has been around far longer than European democracy.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.

That government is best which governs least.

Talk of democracy has little content when big business rules the life of the country through its control of the means of production, exchange, the press and other means of publicity, propaganda and communication.

The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast – is choice.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary.

Democracy has now become corrupted by the nature of the funders.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

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

Democracy has always been in crisis: democracy is all about practicing the art of bearable dissatisfaction. In democratic societies, people often complain about their leaders and their institutions. The gap between the ideal democracy and the existing one cannot be bridged.

The ultimate authority, wherever the derivative may be found, resides in the people alone, and that it will not depend merely on the comparative ambition or address of the different governments, whether either, or which of them, will be able to enlarge its sphere of jurisdiction at the expense of the other.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Naturally the common people don’t want war. . . but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . .

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and Senators and Congressmen and Government officials but the voters of this country.

In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.

Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let’s remember our history ….. Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth

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.

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism.

On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

With the end of the cold war, all the ‘isms’ of the 20th century – Fascism, Nazism, Communism and the evil of apartheid-ism – have failed. Except one. Only democracy has shown itself true the help of all mankind.

Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.

Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

Government is best which governs least

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.

Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Fascism and communism have not entirely disappeared but have been sidelined certainly, and liberal democracy has come to be accepted, in theory at least, around the world, if not always in practice.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

Democracy, by its very nature, can’t be imposed on people. Democracy has to be the people deciding for themselves.

Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.

One could always do more, faster and cleverer, but democracy has its own rhythm.

Democracy and religion stand or fall together. Where democracy has been destroyed, religion has been doomed. Where religion has been trampled down, democracy has ceased to exist…. Tyrants have come and have had their day and then have passed while religion has survived them all.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values.

No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Democracy has both expanded and declined over the years.