Democracy Quotes by Condoleezza Rice, Femi Kuti, Hillary Clinton, Thomas Jefferson, P. J. O’Rourke, Frank Prochaska and many others.
Even when you cherish democratic ideals, it is never easy to turn them into effective democratic institutions. This process will take decades.
Africans should be talking and ask questions, like why does America and Russia have the right to veto votes? These countries talk about democracy and yet are not democratic themselves.
Democracies have to be careful that they do not become so process-driven.
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
Now majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But like other precious, sacred things …. it’s not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza.
Many people are alienated by faceless bureaucracy and what they see as an erosion of participatory democracy. Consequently, there has been a revival of interest in charitable service.
Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.
We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.
Those who try to stifle the vibrancy of our democracy and shield policies from scrutiny behind a false cloak of patriotism miss the real value of what our troops defend and how we best defend our troops. We will ask questions and we will defend our democracy.
Mandela’s commitment to democracy was ratified not only by his election, but by his willingness to step down from power
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times – and our own wars.
Democracy is welcoming people from other lands, and giving them something to hold onto. Usually a mop or a leaf blower.
It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.
The cloud services companies of all sizes; the cloud is for everyone. The cloud is a democracy.
Britain is a parliamentary democracy. Power rests in Parliament, in the House of Commons, and the government – the executive – has to seek the consent of MPs for its legislation.
A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.
The thinking it took to get us into this mess is not the same thinking that is going to get us out of it.
Neutral men are the devil’s allies.
Democracy is not a good that people can enjoy without trouble. It is, on the contrary, a treasure that must be daily defended and conquered anew by strenuous effort.
America has no functioning democracy at this moment.
In other words, the bar should be maintained at the level of a pluralistic and participatory democracy.
I’m not the only one working for democracy in Burma – there are so many people who have worked for it because they believe that this is the only way we can maintain the dignity of our people.
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.
Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.
Democracy is more dangerous than fire. Fire can’t vote itself immune to water.
Without God, there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience… without God, there is a coarsening of the society; without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.
In a true democracy everyone can be upper class and live in Connecticut.
The cornerstone of our policy in that part of the world is to help democracies. Lebanon’s a democracy. We want the Siniora government to succeed.
You see few people here in America who really care very much about living a Christian life in a democratic world.
Our Founding Fathers who created this republic did not believe in democracy. When did we come to worship this idol?
That is not respecting our democracy, using the State Department as a concierge for foreign donations, not really respecting our American democracy.
I think it’s very humble to believe that there is no man, woman or child who should live in tyranny. That people who say, well, maybe Arabs just aren’t ready for democracy or maybe Africans just are going to have corrupt governments, that seems to me arrogant.
A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.
In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.
We should seek international support for our mutual objectives abroad, in promoting freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, and also the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
The real fight isn’t left or right but between forces of democracy across the spectrum and the forces of tyranny.
Look rather at the teachings of history, true history, not the history written by Party hacks: genuine democracy, the only valid democracy, is nourished with the blood of martyrs and with the blood of tyrants.
I am confident that in the end freedom and democracy will prevail over terror and tyranny. We will win this war on terror – and when we do Americans, the British, Iraqis, and people around the world will be more secure.
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 membership survey was a great moment for inner-party democracy. We can’t go back, nor do we want to. Our members are pouring their hearts into this campaign. But people don’t join the Social Democrats party just to put up posters. They join because they want to help steer the party.
If someone says, ‘Democracy is a sham, those people don’t speak for me… the system’s rigged,’ you say, ‘Vote.’ Someone says, ‘I was making a statement by not voting,’ and then you say, ‘Well I can’t hear it.’
I dont personally feel that I have to save democracy and journalism.
Building democracy as an imposition from abroad is a form of imperialism.
India is a democracy; it is in our DNA.
Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.
Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don’t attack each other.
Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.
We cannot afford the creeping paralysis that destroys the effective will of democracy – the paralysis carried by hate and rancor, between class and class, person and person, party and party, as plague is carried through the streets of a town.
Any time you make an analogy to horrific people in history, Mussolini or Hitler, people say, ‘Oh, you’re exaggerating, you’re talking about, it’s hyperbole.’ Maybe it is. … But I would say is that if you are not concerned that democracy could produce bad people, I don’t think you’re really thinking this through too much.
That does not mean we won’t experience the tragedy of the loss of some American lives. We will have an opportunity to instill a democracy in Iraq which will be an example and perhaps force other nations in that region to move in the same direction.
General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.
Lawyer: one who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.
Of governments there are said to be only two forms – democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.
Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.
This is not the kind of country where you would feel comfortable if you were opposed to democracy, parliamentary law, independent courts and so I would say to people who don’t feel comfortable with those values there might be other countries where they’d feel more comfortable with their own values or beliefs.
We must fortify African democracy and peace by launching Radio Democracy for Africa, supporting the transition to democracy now beginning to take place in Nigeria.
I’ll do anything to try to prevent John Bolton from getting any position, because I think his world view is naive. He believes we’re going to spread democracy. We’re going to topple governments everywhere and they’re going to elect Thomas Jefferson. That’s not the way it works in the Middle East.
Patriotic societies seem to think that the way to educate school children in a democracy is to stage bigger and better flag-saluting.
A thoughtless citizen of a democracy is a delinquent citizen of a democracy.
The most important office, and the one which all of us can and should fill, is that of private citizen.
Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal.
Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.
I’m passionate about restoring the efficacy of American democracy, making capitalism sustainable, prioritizing advances in technology, and seizing the opportunities to use that kind of innovation to help usher in a new economy that doesn’t rely on carbon-spewing fossil fuels.
Free speech is not to be regulated like diseased cattle and impure butter. The audience (in this case, the judge or the jury) that hissed yesterday may applaud today, even for the same performance.
But if we had to trade with a Europe dominated by the present German trade policies, we might have to change our methods to some totalitarian form. This is a prospect that any lover of democracy must view with consternation.
Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves.
What Democratic congressmen do to their women staffers, Republican congressmen do to the country.
If you believe in democracy, why shouldn’t you know what the government is doing?
A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, “discovery” of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies.
The separation of church and state has been a cornerstone of American democracy for over two hundred years. Getting rid of it was long overdue.
In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.
This is an election of hope. It is bringing a new trust. These elections will give new strength to the nation.
A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.
Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers.
A lot of young poets today, from what I’ve heard and experienced, can’t get their heads past George W. Bush, and I’ve heard so many poems about this democracy and this era of politics that I’m kind of bored by it
Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.
I noticed that democracy was broken and tried to work on fixing that in Japan. Then I realized that it was broken all over the place and decided to work on that too.
If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them–and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them.
If factual information upsets you, then you are creating a world that is not embracing objective truths, and that’s not how you advance a democracy.
We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is never found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.
The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.
My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man…not to democracy, or blood; it’s to a King & a Kingdom
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
This country has attained ‘Swarajya’, but unfortunately the dream of ‘Surajya’ is left unfulfilled. Today, if there is any major challenge before this country, it is that of a ‘Surajya’ and since the last decade, Gujarat is working in the direction of attaining Surajya.
If we are to give the people of China complete self-government we must first solve the problem of livelihood for all, and give real freedom to the races within China. If the foundations of democracy are secure, then true equality can be achieved.
The vision I would like to see here is the entrenching of the Jewish and the Zionist state. I very much favor democracy, but when there is a contradiction between democratic and Jewish values, the Jewish and Zionist values are more important.
True democracy or the swaraj of the masses can never come through untruthful and violent means.
Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders.
I don’t know whether it’s age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.
Teaching, may I say, is the noblest profession of all in a democracy.
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.
I left Russia in 1993 optimistic that democracy had taken hold despite the obstacles.
I’ve not much faith in the future of the planet and I’m not just thinking about Mr. Bush or global warming. I feel that we’ve lost our way and it looks as if, in so many fields, things are turning sour. Even democracy is turning sour, isn’t it?
My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I’m killing somebody.
Russians absolutely not trying to meddle with the election of Donald Trump. I discussed that with the president-elect. Those conversations never happened. I hear people saying it like it’s a fact on television. That is just not only inaccurate and false, but it’s dangerous and it does undermine our democracy.
Campaign may invite a certain skepticism about democracy, but it will surely restore your faith in cinema verite.
American democracy is supposed to be the paradigm for the rest of the world.
I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it’s the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.
I’m absolutely confident that the actions we took in Iraq are influencing reformers and freedom lovers in the greater Middle East. And I believe that you’re going to see the rise of democracy in many countries in the broader Middle East, which will lay the foundation for peace.
Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.
Therefore, the question is not whether such democratization is possible, but instead how to meet the yearning of the masses in the Middle East for democracy; in other words, how to achieve democratization in the Middle East.
An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Silence is not an effective political strategy, and what we do if we silence the public interest, which is so hard to hear anyway, is that we silence ourselves and then we do not have a democracy.
For the first time in our history, the winners of the White House Turkey Pardon were chosen through a highly competitive online vote. And once again, Nate Silver completely nailed it. The guy is amazing.
You can’t have meaningful political democracy without functioning economic democracy.
One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.
We still have a lot of work to do to protect our own democracy.
So yes in theory there is a kind of a formal democracy and in many ways these were achievements and an improvement over the feudal system and more advanced than anything else in the world, but nothing that we ought to call democracy.
Voting is the most precious right of every citizen, and we have a moral obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process.
The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.
Why should the Negroes ever fight against the only nations of the world where racial discrimination is prohibited, and where the people can live freely? Never! I can assure you, they will never fight against either the Soviet Union or the peoples’ democracies.
In real danger sometimes even a democracy can really keep a secret.
The greatest way to defend democracy is to make it work.
The worst of all States is the democratic State.
The spirit of democracy cannot be superimposed from the outside. It must come from within.
Of the people, by the people, for the people.
Liberty of the people is not my liberty!
It’s abominable, and it’s a disgrace to a great democracy to see what’s happened in our country. The main reason for that has been the enormous infusion of high quantities of money to campaigns – governors, Congress, president and the U.S. Senate.
Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line.
Such a scheme.. the betrayal of the national democracy of Industrial Ulster, would mean a carnival of reaction both North and South, would set back the wheels of progress, would destroy the oncoming unity of the Irish labour movement and paralyse all advanced movements while it lasted.
It is important that democracy in Lebanon is protected and that Hezbollah will not be supported by outside forces like Syria and Iran.
When you try to sow the seeds of doubt in people`s minds about the legitimacy of our election, that undermines democracy. Then you`re doing the work of our adversaries for them.
Gone is any mention of American exceptionalism. I happen to believe that twice, three times in the 20th century, the United States saved Western democracy, both World War – both World Wars and the Cold War.
I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.
I support our democracy. And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.
Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.
Thought’s a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?
Even though I’m appalled when racism surfaces, and I personally don’t agree with certain policy solutions and a lot of what they believe in, as someone who is very concerned about reinvigorating democracy the Tea Parties are an answer to what I asked for.
Access to justice is a fundamental part of a properly functioning democracy.
The practice of our democracy depends on a sense of, and knowledge of, history in the same way that playing in the World Series requires a bat and a ball.
‘This is how democracy works,’ Barack Obama lectured the country before giving everyone the specifics of his expansive one-man executive overreach on immigration. If you enjoy platitudinous straw men but are turned off by open debate and constitutional order, this speech was for you.
There are only two kinds of books — good books and the others. The good are winnowed from the bad through the democracy of time.
I would love to have the endorsement of every progressive organization in America. We’re very proud to have received recently the endorsement of MoveOn.org. We’ve received the endorsement Democracy for America. These are grassroots organizations representing millions of workers.
The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities – which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.
You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it.
All of my novels are democracies.
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
I am a child of the House of Commons. I was brought up in my fathers house to believe in democracy. Trust the peoplethat was his message.
Freedom of the press is essential to the preservation of a democracy; but there is a difference between freedom and license. Editorialists who tell downright lies in order to advance their own agendas do more to discredit the press than all the censors in the world.
True Democracy makes no enquiry about the color of the skin, or the place of nativity. Wherever it sees a man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights
That the will of the people can be established by voting for democrats is, of course, a delusion. Yet when considering a non-threatening system for deciding between diverse interests, then voting, of course, can be regarded as a humane and civilized process.
[T]here is only one sound argument for democracy, and that is the argument that it is a crime for any man to hold himself out as better than other men, and, above all, a most heinous offense for him to prove it.
…Local prohibitions cannot block advances in military and commercial technology… Democratic movements for local restraint can only restrain the world’s democracies, not the world as a whole.
Democracy is like blowing your nose. You may not do it well, but it’s something you ought to do yourself.
Democracy is liberty – a liberty which does not infringe on the liberty nor encroach on the rights of others; a liberty which maintains strict discipline, and makes law its guarantee and the basis of its exercise. This alone is true liberty; this alone can produce true democracy.
This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life, and we the democracies of this world are going to have to come together and fight it together.
Freedom and democracy are dreams you never give up.
Democracy no longer works for the poor if politicians treat them as a separate race.
If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it’s probably not broad enough a coalition.
Referendums are a democratic instrument, but so are decisions reached in a parliamentary democracy. I advise extreme caution when it comes to referendums. In Germany too.
You know, I wish the world well. I want Iraq to have democracy and the Haitians to have democracy. I want the people of Afghanistan to thrive. Lord knows, we spend enough money there to help them. What about people at home? Isn’t that our first responsibility?
I’m convinced that democracy cannot be exported from one country to another, like you cannot expert revolutions, ideology.
We do have to take the long-term view. And long term, the question to ask ourselves is whether America should attack others pre-emptively, whether she should embroil herself in wars far away from our soil, and try to bring democracy by force to the rest of the world.
I’m sort of always trying to reinvent and recreate a better way of being, because, you know, democracy has been “the worst of all political systems except for all the rest.” So I think we have a lot of room to grow and be a better society, and it’s a constant battle. It’s an exciting opportunity to be active.
I believe that American engagement, through our embassy, our businesses, and most of all through our people, is the best way to advance our interests and support for democracy and human rights.
We don’t want peace over freedom. We will choose freedom over peace. We will go on with our fight for self-determination and democracy. But if things continue the way they are, I expect the situation to become more violent.
I suspect that democracy is not viable in a technologically advanced society. Free people wield too much ability to destroy.
Concentration of executive power, unless it’s very temporary and for specific circumstances, let’s say fighting world war two, it’s an assault on democracy.
Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.
The Communist Manifesto was correct but we see the privileges of the capitalist bourgeoisie yielding to democratic organizations. In my judgment success lies in a steady [peaceful] advance [rather] than in a catastrophic crash.
Pay 2 Play vividly tells the story of the threat posed to our political process by big money interests and what we can do to fight back to defend our Republic. This is a must-see movie for anyone who cares about the cause of democracy and the promise of political equality for all.
To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.
Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don’t understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn’t a business.
Having created the conditions that make markets possible, democracy must do all the things that markets undo or cannot do.
I sow; my successor reaps. This is the majesty of democracy.
There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.
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.
Democracy is a word all public men use and none understand.
An enlightened citizen is an indispensable ingredient of the infrastructure of
democracy.
democracy.
In the months ahead, I will leave the Department of Justice, but I will never — I will never — leave the work. I will continue to serve and try to find ways to make our nation even more true to its founding ideals.
Having gathered all power to itself, [the State] has become the sole focus of all conflict, and it must construct totalitarian defences to match its total exposure.
A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.
There are people working their butts off trying to save our republic and save democracy from the likes of powerful people in the Democrat Party who want to take this country and turn it into a personal little playground for their own private gain.
As democracy modifies our conception of life, it constantly raises the value and function of each member of the community, however humble he may be.
I think it’s a big disservice to our country and to our democracy to continue to raise these doubts.
If America has a civic religion, the First Amendment is its central article of faith.
In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.
Democracy is not a Beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent deserves our support.
The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.
A government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices, and ambitions of their leaders is a democracy.
Liberty has not only enemies which it conquers, but perfidious friends, who rob the fruits of its victories: Absolute democracy, socialism.
We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.
The struggle for equality is really a struggle for democracy, and that’s why it’s a struggle for all the population.
Ultimately, we didn’t go to Germany to create a democracy. We went to overthrow Adolf Hitler. But once a democracy was there, Germany was a much bigger supporter of and help to our national interests, both economic and security than had ever been before.
The American system of democracy is founded on the concept that every citizen has the right to vote, to know that their vote is counted, and that the vote is counted accurately.
It’s this mingling of the economic and political elite which is really destroying our democracy.
The state must protect the media. In a democracy, the role of media is very important. In the absence of a credible opposition party, you can rely on the media.
I believe that during these times, we should not forget that many sacrificed to regain our democracy. We cannot just keep quiet because that is what happened during martial law. Our dictator then believed that he can do anything to keep himself in power.
If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our Democracy; Tonight is your answer.
The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can’t go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters.
The Communists automatically violated the daily practices of democracy to which I was accustomed.
A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical: there’s no democracy without a market economy, but you can have a market economy without democracy.
Democracy is about non-arbitrary decisions. Democracy is about spreading decisions; it is not about destroying processes.
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
A democracy when put to the strain grows weak, and is supplanted by Oligarchy.
Jon Stewart is a remarkable satirist and parodist in the vein of Mark Twain, because Jon Stewart understands what Mark Twain knew, which is that the truth goes down more easily in a democracy when it’s marinated in humor.
It is, the most beautiful truth in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or divided interest from our race. In their welfare is ours, and by choosing the broadest paths to effect their happiness we choose the surest and the shortest to our own.
The effect of a representative democracy is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation.
Only the person who does not evade conflict and directs his efforts in keeping with the course of society’s development can be an effective leader.
An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid … because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
I don’t think NRA members are bad people at all. I think they’re responsible gun owners that want to become politically active and make their voices heard in this democracy.
The Republic may not give wealth or happiness, she has not promised these. It is the freedom to pursue these, not their realization, we can claim.
When you are subverting the power of government, that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible.
Democracy’s ceremonial, its feast, it’s great function, is the election.
In the democracy of the dead all men at last are equal. There is neither rank nor station nor prerogative in the republic of the grave.
I happen to love America. I love this freedom and democracy. The fact is we are the ones who killed innocent people, men, women and children, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki with nuclear weapons, weapons that should have never been used, should have never been developed in the first place, you know?
The freedoms of religion, thought and speech are all fundamental rights Canadians not only enjoy, we have fought for them at home and abroad. We know that a vibrant democracy means that on some issues, Canadians will understandably have different views.
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.
Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.
I have always favored Capitalism as the best economic system and Democracy as the best political system. They both have the most potential for improving the lives of people. However, both systems need to be reexamined and refreshed so that, in fact, they do serve the majority of people.
The Trump administration always says it wants to correct Obama’s mistakes. It should add his mishandling of Arab democracy to its list.
A free and truly independent press – fiercely independent when necessary – is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.
Many of the democratization projects are a real threat to real democracy.
What can the schools do to defend democracy? Should they preach a specific political doctrine? I believe they should not. If they are able to teach young people to have a critical mind and a socially oriented attitude, they will have done all that is necessary.
I confess to considerable doubts about the eventual stability of democracy, unless buttressed by constitutional safeguards and a general climate of opinion which thoroughly understands the case for liberty in general
The constant free flow of communication amount us-enabling the free interchange of ideas-forms the very bloodstream of our nation. It keeps the mind and body of our democracy eternally vital, eternally young.
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 promises of Fidel Castro’s so-called revolution of pluralism and democracy, were and continue to be a false promise and a betrayal of all basic human rights.
Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity
Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.
America is stronger than ever. We will forever remember those we lost on September 11, 2001. In honoring their memory, we will remain true to our commitment to freedom and democracy.
Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.
In a well-functioning democracy, citizens have the option of voting their political masters out of office. Not so in most companies.
In order to solve the climate crisis, we need to solve the democracy crisis.
Do not allow Democrats anywhere near foreign policy. Not even to keep them away from domestic policy. It’s a mistake to ask those who don’t even like democracy to defend it.
When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen – that’s a direct quote – it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents.
We’re on the verge of civil war in Northern Ireland. Why? Because if you take away the forums of democracy you don’t have anything left.
Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.
Democracy is the worst kind of government, I’m sorry. Would you still call yourself a Christian if they elected a new Jesus every four years?
In walking through the world there is a choice for a man to make. He can choose the fair and open path, the path which sound ethics, sound democracy, and the common law prescribe, or choose the secret way by which he can get the better of his fellow man.
And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up
In a democracy one must have the right to express oneself and that’s what I do, even if it displeases.
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.
Many people don’t understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz… And that is really the idea of democracy – freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don’t just get out there and do anything you want.
The structure of the Swiss ruling class is rock-hard, and unchanged since the time of Napoleon. They sit on their mountains and lecture the world on democracy. It’s an unbelievable show of self-satisfaction and arrogance.
The great thing about our system of democracy is when they call you for jury duty, you have to come… It’s an honor and a privilege. I was called and I’ve got to be here.
The growing tide of anti-Semitism shocks the conscious of everyone who values freedom, and the ugly, hateful acts particularly stain the character of democracies where liberty and religious freedom are supposed to be respected.
An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of Democracy
The Internet can empower groups whose aims are in fact antithetical to democracy.
Let the people decide whom to vote for, who has more authority. And only people, only our citizens, are able to place the final emphasis, voting for this or that person or political force, or rejecting it. That’s democracy.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
In a parliamentary democracy, it is the job of parliament to decide the law, not the government.
I think [Winston] Churchill said it was ” [democracy] the worst of all systems except for all the others.” And that’s probably true. It’s never gone easily.
Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality.
The second thing we have to do is to make sure that all of us think about how we approach our elections and our democracy not only to secure them from vote tampering, but also to make sure that we understand when propaganda is being churned through the system.
Subtler and more far-reaching means of invading privacy have become available to the government. Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet.
In whose delusional mind is democracy made ‘better’ by allowing wealthy people to control more of it?
The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster – especially if some nations are not democracies.
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.
The only one who can fight for these values like democracy and freedoms are the people of any country or any society, not the foreigners.
The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.
But sir- we are a beginning democracy. If there were not strikes, this would not be a democracy.
We don’t need people who can spit back facts. We’ve got Google.
A free press is the immune system of representative democracy.
You have fewer rights because you are a minority. Absolutely, that’s how democracy works.
I would like to ask the many Filipino people to pray together, to help each other so that we will be able to preserve the democracy we restored 20 years ago.
I would say to the new leadership the American people are ready to meet you if you move forward toward the path of democracy.
To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.
He who merely knows right principles is not equal to him who loves them.
I think America should amass a strategy for success, and set out the milestones. We need to help the Iraqis get their democracy up and running, we’ve got to help them train their military and police and security people, and we’ve got to start moving out.
Grounded in international human rights, gender equality doesn’t just improve the lives of individual women, girls, and their families; it makes economic sense, strengthens democracy, and enables long-term sustainable progress.
And you know, we were talking about American identity, and where we’ve come from and where we are and where we’re headed. We knew that we wanted to have a hopeful ending and we wanted it to be pro-community, and a pro-democracy type of movie.
My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm-as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.
Democracy means the power of the people and the possibility of influencing the governing parties. Russia had had enough experience with a one-party-system – we will not go back there.
I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.
I grew up in San Francisco. And so I’m informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I’m a very ardent patriot.
You know who is against democracy in the Middle East? The husbands. They got used to their way of life. Now, the traditional way of life must change. Everybody must change. If you don’t give equal rights to women, you can’t progress.
Fear and monarchy pair nicely. But democracy means you have to work with people you may not like but you must still believe are your equals. And a fearful people never trust the other side.
As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.
Everything sells. Like integrity. Like democracy. Like truth. Like deeds.
Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on.
Despite elections and the experience of post-Soviet personal freedoms by the Russian people, the fate of democracy in Russia is perhaps more ambiguous now than at any time since the collapse of the Communist system.
Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.
Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad.
In a democracy, everyone has the right to criticise the Government.
What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there’s only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That’s the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that’s the only sensible way to run human affairs.
A democracy is a compromise by its nature. It’s not a dictatorship.
I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
I’m worried about the traditional media, but I think the new media is a plus for democracy.
We are inclined to confuse freedom and democracy, which we regard as moral principles, with the way in which they are practiced in America with capitalism, federalism, and the two-party system, which are not moral principles but simply the preferred and accepted practices of the American people.
The more government dependents, the more likely that democracy will become a conspiracy against self-reliance.
The role of citizen in our democracy does not end with your vote.
I think we can build democracy in Pakistan. But it will take time. And it will be a Pakistani democracy. Not one that’s imposed by…someone else.
The three main sources of scepticism are first, that not every people desires freedom second, that democracy in certain parts of the world would be dangerous and third, that there is little the world’s democracies can do to advance freedom outside their countries.
My definition of secularism is very clear. The sole religion of the Government is Nation First, the holy book is the Constitution.
The first official statements of President Asif Ali Zardari’s new government have been firm and robust. Pakistan is obviously a renewed democracy.
I think it is very important for any U.S. administration to be clear that America stands on the side of freedom and democracy and respect for individual rights.
Women are only half responsible for children. Men raise children as much as women do. Until men are as nurturing as women are, and until women are as active outside the home as men are, we won’t have democratic families, and therefore we won’t have democracy, and we will continue this hierarchical notion of life.
You’ve gotta understand what Putin’s strategy is. He really doesn’t like democracy. He thinks it’s an inconvenient, messy process. And he doesn’t like us, and he wants to destabilize our country; sow doubt about our democracy.
Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.
The ideas of ancient Greece helped inspire America’s founding fathers as they reached for democracy. Our revolutionary ideas helped inspire Greeks as they sought their own freedom.
As we talk with candour, we open the doors to new possibilities and new areas of cooperation in advance in democracy, in combating terrorism, in energy and environment, science and technology and international peacekeeping.
The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
It is intolerable that around 1 in 5 of the world’s adults are illiterate. How can we build equitable information societies or thriving democracies if so many remain without the basic tools of literacy?
We are patriots in my family, we are believers in America, we’re believers in democracy.
Our democracy must be not only the envy of the world but the engine of our own renewal. There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
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!’
What good shall I do this day?
We can enhance democracy by making it in line with its original vision. Read the dollar bill – E pluribus unum, out of many, one; novus ordo seclorum, a new order of the ages. That’s democracy.
Organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
The word democracy comes from the Greek and means, literally, government by the people.
The U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the “free press,” is that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests.
There is no question in the fact that India has a global responsibility, and the coming “Gyan Yug” would see India play a pivotal role, using the strengths of its democracy and demographic dividend.
In Latin America, specialists and polling organisations have, for some time, observed that the extension of formal democracy was accompanied by an increasing disillusionment about democracy and a lack of faith in democratic institutions.
Democracy in Iraq will be an example that the Arab population will look to with great interest. And some Arab governments are concerned about democracy in Iraq, not because Iraq will be an aggressive state against them, but rather by the example that will be set by a successful federal democratic state in Iraq.
I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.
India is a huge democracy. Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi has ambitions to try to fix the infrastructure, the rules, taxes, education, and to lift up the Indian people. And we’re hopeful that that’s going to create positive momentum.
America in some ways is much more of a democracy then France. It is and it’s not.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
The much-lauded parliamentary democracy in India has been unable to protect a genuine democratic set-up in Kashmir.
Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one.
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.
I guess 35 years ago, I thought we had more of a democracy than we actually do. Majority support doesn’t help unless the majority is active and votes – but the opposition minority votes a much greater proportion, so we often lose by a narrow margin.
Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.
The system he (President Hosni Mubarak) is recommending would make it virtually impossible for truly independent parties to participate. Sham democracy should be exposed for what it truly is.
H.L.Mencken’s war aims, according to the handful of observers who deigned to notice his conflict, were the overthrow of American Democracy, the Christian religion, and the YMCA. He was also credited with trying to wipe out poets and luncheon orators.
Unless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measuresby results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice.
No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry… If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy.
I think that rather than talking about particular models, of which there could be a huge number, we should talk about basic principles of democracy. After all, even within the West, there is no single standard and single model.
Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.
Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.
If you look at all the lobbyists in Washington, this is not a democracy. This is ruled by special interest groups. That includes the military, the pharmaceutical industry, the people who produce mechanized debt, GMO foods. We are prisoners.
And we are grateful to the American young men and women who are risking their lives to give the Iraqi people this chance, this dream of democracy in Iraq now.
Seven years is a short time in the history of a country’s democracy. But in this short time, people of Bhutan have developed faith in the institutions of democracy.
Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up; they should have the chance to live in one today.
Our political class no longer has any convictions. You can only pass along the beliefs that you hold. They no longer believe in France – they have a post-national worldview. I call them France-skeptics. That’s why democracy is collapsing here in France.
I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.
The answer to violence is even more democracy, even more humanity…
Newspapers write ringing editorials declaring that this is and always was a democracy.
I am the son of a freedom fighter, and a son of a freedom fighter automatically imbibes the value of democracy.
The second ‘Postal Service’ album is threatening to become the ‘Chinese Democracy’ of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won’t.
There are a lot of great organizations who are fighting for food and environmental safety in this country. The Environmental Working Group, Just Label It, Food Democracy Now, and the Center for Food Safety, to name a few.
The essence of globalization is a subordination of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of global trade and investment.
The world also remains a hopeful place. Calls for democracy and human rights are being reborn everywhere, and these calls are an expression of support for the values enshrined in the United Nations Charter. They encourage our hopes for a more stable, more peaceful, more prosperous world.
I do not believe that the values which the Western democracies consider essential to civilization can survive in a world rent by the international anarchy of nationalism and the economic anarchy of competitive enterprise.
The American flag is the most recognized symbol of freedom and democracy in the world.
Class struggle: external peace, international solidarity, peace among peoples. This is the sacred slogan of international socialist democracy that liberates nations.
A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods.
A people inspired by democracy, human rights and economic opportunity will turn their back decisively against extremism.
Without the persistence of voters in America getting up to every election, democracy will not flourish.
There is no doubt our democracy can be very messy and America does remain a sharply divided country.
The United States Constitution has proved itself the most marvelously elastic compilation of rules of government ever written.
I’ve written a book entitled ‘Islam: the Challenges of Democracy,’ because it is a challenge. It requires careful interpretation of the Islamic tradition and Islamic theology, and there’s a lot in there that would support democratic ideals.
Mr. Speaker, democracy works best when the American electorate is engaged and informed.
That’s the issue that I’ve been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire? That’s paralleled with: How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn’t that the Empire conquered the Republic, it’s that the Empire is the Republic.
Let the people decide whom to vote for, who has more authority. And only people, only our citizens, are able to place the final emphasis, voting for this or that person or political force, or rejecting it. Thats democracy.
Israel, the Jewish state, the only democracy in the Middle East, continues to shine as a beacon of light in the darkest region of the world.
The world was never more unsafe for democracy then it is today.
The Americans’ position is clear: we promote democracy.
Putting it as strongly as I can, the failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy.
One of the things we’re going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy. Because there are some trade-offs involved. I welcome this debate, and I think it’s healthy for our democracy.
Under the leadership of this President, the state of the union is not strong. We are being pulled apart rather than pulling together. Our democracy is suffering from the choices being made, and yet we are offered the same tired excuses and unrealistic analyses.
I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
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.
Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.
In democracy, every election is a learning process. You learn from every election, the one that you win and the one that you lose. And then you prepare for the next one.
You and I have never seen democracy; all we’ve seen is hypocrisy.
You can’t always say what’s popular and you ought to go with it. I think that’s why the founders were concerned about direct democracy. That’s why we have a republic and that’s why we have representatives who who are supposed to look at the issues and to look out for the next generation as well.
We have proved that the true strength of our nation comes not from the scale of our wealth but from the power of our ideals – opportunity, democracy, liberty and hope.
The fundamental truth of democracy is the belief that the real pleasures of life are increased by sharing them.
Welcome to Israel, where chanting “Death to Arabs” is democracy, running over children is equality, and firing on funerals is peace.
If there were a people consisting of gods, they would be governed democratically. So perfect a government is not suitable to men.
If you say in advance there is going to be a main candidate and then that doesn’t count later, then that’s going to be a highly problematic occurrence in a democracy.
It is one of the evils of democratical governments, that the people, not always seeing and frequently misled, must often feel before they can act.
Democracy isn’t a gift. It’s a responsibility.
I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
If you’re not turned on by politics, politics will turn on you.
Vote early and vote often.
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.
When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
There is no “ruler” in our country. Poland is a democracy. Our Prime Minister leads the government; the President is fulfilling his tasks. But there is a little bit left for the party leader.
It is when it is contended that “in a democracy right is what the majority makes it to be” that democracy degenerates into demagoguery.
There is a tendency in any conflict, especially in a democracy, to fight the enemy you can, not the enemy you should.
The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.
Acts of anti-Semitism in countries throughout the world, including some of the world’s strongest democracies, have increased significantly in frequency and scope over the last several years.
Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.
I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.
We should insist that governments receiving American aid live up to standards of accountability and transparency, and we should support countries that embrace market reforms, democracy, and the rule of law.
Perhaps our national ambition to standardize ourselves has behind it the notion that democracy means standardization. But standardization is the surest way to destroy the initiative, to denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.
I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.
Winning Democracy for the Negro is winning the war for Democracy
I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.
Before the military coup in Chile, we had the idea that military coups happen in Banana Republics, somewhere in Central America. It would never happen in Chile. Chile was such a solid democracy. And when it happened, it had brutal characteristics.
A crime is a crime irrespective of the birth marks of the criminal.
One of the hallmarks of higher education and of democracy is the ability to converse with people with whom we disagree.
It ‘s really hard to impose democracy. It has to emerge naturally. You have to get out of the way and let it happen.
I was never convinced that war was the best system to bring democracy to the country.
We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning–of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party’s policy.
Democracy is not the end product, but the means to the end, which is the enjoyment of human rights by all.
The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.
I don’t get that – people going to war over religion. I don’t know, I could see going to war over justice or democracy or even revenge. But if you’re going to war over religion, now you’re just killing people in an argument over who has the better imaginary friend.
Democracy depends on people speaking out, and in times of great crisis, on people creating a commotion.
What we call a financial crisis is really at its core a crisis of management, and not just a crisis of management, but a crisis of management culture. …In other words, what you had is a detachment of people who know the business from people who are running the business.
Europe tends to favor stability over democracy, America democracy over stability.
Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.
I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.
I like to think I have the guts to stand up anonymously in a western democracy and call for things no-one else believes in – like peace and justice and freedom.
Marriage is like democracy – it doesn’t really work, but it’s all we’ve been able to come up with.
We in the United States are very often – since we are a democracy and we have national interests, we’ve often made the mistake that a democracy has to adopt America’s interests, and that is a contradiction because a democracy basically is people deciding what their interests are.
Every American should have absolute control over his or her personal information
How can people in other countries who are trying to grasp our plan of democracy avoid stumbling over our logic when we deny the first steps in democracy to our women?
I did not suggest that Iran is a democracy; just the opposite. I talked about it being a repressive theocracy. What I think is indisputable is that even within this repressive regime, the political leaders there – including the Supreme Leader – are sensitive to the concerns of the population within bounds.
Here in the U.S., we’ve made democracy into a science. A cold, impersonal science.
The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man.
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.
A free press is the cornerstone of democracy; there is no question about that.
I think it is extremely important that the West support this experiment [of Tunisian democracy] with investment, with aid, with symbolic support, not just flows of democracy assistance …If Tunisia can’t make it, what are the prospects for the rest of the Arab world?
Our democracy poses problems and these problems must and shall be solved by courageous leadership.
In Germany democracy died by the headman’s axe. In Britain it can be by pernicious anaemia.
The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it’s a constitution that’s the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it’s the most generous nation in the world.
Democracies don’t war; democracies are peaceful countries.
We have a democracy within the bounds of a constitution which provides certain guarantees related to the basic humanity of every person. I think that’s the best way to go.
The equality that we are all entitled to, as citizens of this democracy, can’t be avoided by some religious dogma of a President who’s is supposed to believe in the notion of separation of church and state. And he frankly doesn’t.
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.
My heart beats red, white, and blue.
And with patriotism it aches
Generally, I believe in democracy, freedom and civil rights
But in particular, cupcakes
And with patriotism it aches
Generally, I believe in democracy, freedom and civil rights
But in particular, cupcakes
All we want is to carry out the greatest expression of a free democracy and vote on Catalonia’s future. This is not about independence: it is about fundamental civil rights and the universal right of self-determination.
This is the permanent tension that lies at the heart of a capitalist democracy and is exacerbated in times of crisis. In order to ensure the survival of the richest, it is democracy that has to be heavily regulated rather than capitalism.
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.
Each Middle East country has their own unique kinds of challenges; but the fundamentals, the desire for democracy and freely elected governments is a common thread throughout.
Right now, we don’t have any leadership from White House to try to understand what our principal foreign adversary was doing to interfere with our elections, to, in effect, destabilize our democracy. So, I think this is – this should be of interest to any American.
We’re not a democracy. It’s a terrible misunderstandin g and a slander to the idea of democracy to call us that. In reality, we’re a plutocracy: a government by the wealthy.
It’d make a wonderful change to have the leader of a pluralist democracy who acted on that, who told people just how tough things are going to be, just what’s going to have to be done – and, maybe, ran all the risks on the side of honesty, rather than spinning stories and trying to win the headlines every day.
In my view this is not democracy, but a zoo…. It was exactly what we expected, but not on that scale nor in that form. In a word, it was nothing but a zoo, you can’t put it better
The proper response toward what we occasionally imagine to be democracy, methinks, is to retain one’s self-respect by not participating in it.
Democracy makes us articulate our views, defend them, and refine them.
What you’re seeing is a loss of confidence in institutions and their legitimacy because they are not seen as delivering. It’s hardly a surprise that it’s producing a degree of paralysis. Politics becomes very reactive and it’s hard to deal with the bigger issues.
Freedom is participation in power.
…the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.
Democracy is interactive… Its a constant job of information, education, explanation, listening, and interactive communication.
One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests…. The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, “Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.
Deception can cost billions. Think Enron, Madoff, the mortgage crisis. Or in the case of double agents and traitors, like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, lies can betray our country. They can compromise our security. They can undermine democracy. They can cause the deaths of those that defend us.
Politicians don’t want democracy here in America, why would they want it in the Middle East?
Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.
Jazz is democracy in music.
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.
In the world there is no democracy better than our democracy. Such a thing has never before been seen.
Today, there is a new focus on public values, the need for broad-based movements for solidarity, and alternative conceptions of politics, democracy and justice.
When the voices of democracy are silenced, freedom becomes a hollow concept. No man or woman should be sentenced to the shadows of silence for something he or she has said or written.
I think Sinn Fein remains the greatest threat to our democracy and our prosperity as a state.
The idea of self-government is foreign to Americans. … Self-government is a form of self-control, self-limitation. It goes against our whole grain. We’re supposed to go after what we want, not question whether we really need it.
My interest is, my one hobby is, maintaining a democracy. If you get these 500,000 soldiers advocating anything smelling of Fascism, I am going to get 500,000 more and lick the hell out of you, and we will have a real war right at home.
We have advanced far enough to say that democracy is a way of life. We have yet to realize that it is a way of personal life and one which provides a moral standard for personal conduct.
With folded hands I say, give me your support & I will give Surajya.
I have come from outside Delhi, but I give you an assurance that the people in the Government are very capable. I want to awaken and unite that power for the welfare of nation.
As a prisoner of conscience committed to peaceful transition to democracy, I urge Europe to apply economic sanctions against Ethiopia. What short-term pain may result will be compensated by long-term gain. A pledge to re-engage energetically with a democratic Ethiopia would act as a catalyst for reform.
Enough of this foreign fiasco distraction. Get back to work. It is time to bomb Obamacare.
I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.
We`re a little bit low in the 1970s, right, post-Vietnam, Watergate era, malaise, all that, but this is more like the 1930s where the very notion of liberal democracy is being questioned, and that is disturbing.
Every voter is a Bharat Bhagya Vidhata.
Europeans used to be proud to be the advanced form of democracy. Now they’re definitely a little bit ashamed because we are seeing that finally, the bond that we had, it was money.
If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.
Democracy is, in essence, a form of non-violent conflict management. If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention.
Why is it that aggression in the name of God shocks secular liberal sensibilities, whereas the act of killing in the name of the secular nation, or of democracy, does not?
Intimidation, harassment and violence have no place in a democracy.
Democracy can be sustained and developed only by people who understand its essence.
Polls are the corporate media’s standardized tests to determine how well we have learned what it has taught us.
Few things are more damaging to our democracy than a military officer who doesn’t have the moral courage to stand up for what’s right or the moral fiber to step aside when circumstances dictate.
The promise to leave the European Union, end the supremacy of EU law and take back control of our democracy. With my leadership, it will be delivered.
It can sound trite if you just say citizens need to be educated for democracy to work, but for him it wasn’t trite. It was really this strenuous challenge to citizens to use their moments of leisure, which he defined as time away from work, to collect the facts that were necessary for full democratic participation.
Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was preserved.
We should say to the West: “You have been supporting dictators for too many years. Don’t expect the people to introduce democracy over night. It is going to take time.” It took time with the French revolution, it took time with the Eastern European revolutions. And it is going to take time there.
There is no democracy in Russia. Dictators do not go away through the vote. Putin relies on riot police, thousands of them, with heavy equipment, fighting Russian youngsters from opposition.
Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism. America is strong because its journalism is strong. That is how democracies work. They’re only as good as the quality of the information that the public possesses and that is where we come in.
The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.
From these activists we can learn a crucial lesson: without citizens creating the institutions necessary for facilitating the growth of public deliberation, democracy will be a meaningless term. Without political leaders articulating this idea and acting upon it, public life and citizenship will continue to stagnate.
It is no accident that the rise of so many democracies took place in a time when the world’s most influential nation was itself a democracy.
Knowledge of the natural world and how it works should be counted as fundamental to informed governance. You can’t have a functioning democracy, if the electorate is under-informed or, worse, mis-informed.
How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?
Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation.
There is no democracy without socialism, and no socialism without democracy.
Complete equality isn’t compatible with democracy, but it is a agreeable to tolitarianism. After all the only way to ensure the equality of the slothful, the inept and the immoral is to suppress everyone else.
Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest.
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.
The absolute ruler may be a Nero, but he is sometimes a Titus or Marc Aurelius; the people is often Nero, but never Marc Aurelius.
Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor.
Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried.
The Orange Revolution was a powerful example of democracy around the world. The people of Ukraine are continuing to shape their own future.
Neoliberalism considers the discourse of equality, justice, and democracy quaint, if not dangerous and must be either trivialized, turned into its Orwellian opposite, or eviscerated from public life.
Public control of the political process requires public financing. The restoration of our American Democracy depends upon public financing.
In brief, Western democracy, as other political models, is not exportable to all regions of the world.
Peace, prosperity, and democracy cannot endure if imposed from the outside. We should cease to make false distinctions between peacekeeping and prevention; they are in fact inextricably linked.
Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change; in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.
I think most of [people] are not very well educated themselves to understand the Winston Churchill line – democracy is the worst of all governments until you consider all the other ones.
Just as I’m opposed to political fascism, I’m opposed to economic fascism. I think that until major institutions of society are under the popular control of participants and communities, it’s pointless to talk about democracy.
Socialism without democracy is unthinkable.
A central claim of the Bush administration’s foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism.
It scares me when the Europeans demand more and more democracy. It sounds like times past, when people here demanded more and more socialism.
Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner.
We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know, and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.
The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.
If an individual agrees with everybody, he lacks conviction; if he likes everybody and is everybody’s friend, he is indifferent to one and all.
Plutocracy too long tolerated leaves democracy on the auction block, subject to the highest bidder.
The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.
The best revenge is democracy.
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, ‘Will America be a democracy?’
We have bloated bureaucracies in Corporate America. The root of the problem is the absence of real corporate democracy.
A perfect democracy is therefore the most shameless thing in the world.
Fishing is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility, and of human frailty. The forces of nature discriminate for no man.
A democracy barely functions under the neoliberal system.
A vigorous democracy a democracy in which there are freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech would never succumb to communism or any other ism.
As I was saying, half a democracy is showing up and people have got not only to agree with this agenda, some of these third parties listeners, they’ve got to show up.
When the safety of America is threatened, we will spend any amount of money. The real safety of our nation is preparing this next generation so that they can take our place [in] thinking and technology and democracy.
I do not deny the rights of democracy, but I have no illusions as to the uses that will be made of those rights so long as wisdom is rare and pride abundant
I grew up in a dictatorship, so I really appreciate democracy. I think democracy isn’t just a random thing that’s around – a democratic society needs the involvement of everybody.
When we define democracy now it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.
We want to be a country with a competitive edge in the world. And a country with a solid democracy. To do that, we need to attack the social problems, and extreme poverty is probably the worst of those.
The happiest thing that can be said about democracy… is that it is one of the few systems that has been willing to risk a long period of confusion and mixed purposes for the sake of giving man a chance to grow up in mind and responsibility.
Jeffersonian Democracy simply meant the possession of the federal government by the agrarian masses led by an aristocracy of slave-owning masses.
A democracy can’t succeed without people’s participation. ‘MyGov’ empowers the people of India to contribute towards Surajya.
Running a school where the students all succeed, even if some students have to help others to make the grade, is good preparation for democracy.
Jeans represent democracy in fashion.
The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development.
It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism – imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
In the EU you have half a billion people who share a common belief in democracy, in rights, in the kind of economic life we want.
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
There is one expanding horror in American life. It is that our long odyssey toward liberty, democracy and freedom-for-all may be achieved in such a way that utopia remains forever closed, and we live in freedom and hell, debased of style, not individual from one another, void of courage, our fear rationalized away.
We’re at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that’s compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air.
In a democracy, you believe it or not; in a dictatorship, you believe it or else.
The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
If you say simply that pressures toward democracy are created by the market, I would say yes
Democracy is perhaps the most promiscuous word in the world of public affairs.
The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.
Justice delayed is democracy denied.
The US and the European Union needs to help in the translation of the demand for democracy into a political will.
The budget should be balanced, the treasury refilled, public debt reduced, the arrogance of officialdom tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt.
Obama offers himself as a catalyst by which disenchanted Americans can overcome two decades of vicious partisanship, energize our democracy, and restore faith in government.
Democracy is that form of society, no matter what its political classification, in which every man has a chance and knows that he has it.
While we enjoy the benefits of living in the greatest democracy in the world, we must be ever conscious of the fact that none of the achievements or freedoms enjoyed in America would be possible without the price that has been paid for by our servicemen and women.
Until we can democratically control the wealth that is created from our labor, there isn’t real democracy.
Because of my parents’ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia – first by Hitler and then by Stalin.
I am still baffled by those who feel that criticizing America is unpatriotic, a view increasingly being adopted in the United States since 9/11 as an excuse to render suspect what has always been an American right. An active, brave, outspoken (and heard) citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy.
The government may change faces from time to time, but it’s not like we fight wars for democracy – we fight wars for capitalism and for oil.
I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.
Democracy is a very admirable form of government – for dogs
It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
Like most Israelis, I know very little about the Arabs. We just look down on them and see them as a threat. We have absolutely no experience with a democratic country in our vicinity. Is it good or bad for us? I am convinced that democracy isn’t just good for the people in those countries, but for Israel as well.
The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.
I’m concerned about the survival, historically, of constitutional democracy.
I sometimes read that it’s time for German democracy to finally grow up. I don’t see it as a sign of maturity if we treat military missions as something normal.
Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
Prosperity can’t be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Democracy can’t be just for billionaires and corporations. Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain, too.
Democracy means not “I am as good as you are” but “You are as good as I am.”.
As the acceptance of democracy brings a certain life-giving power, so it has its own sanctions and comforts. Perhaps the most obvious one is the curious sense which comes to us from time to time, that we belong to the whole, that a certain basic well being can never be taken away from us whatever the turn of fortune.
If we want to preserve the foundation of our democracy, it’s vital that we find common ground that allows us to work for the greater good of this nation. This does not mean giving up our values. This does not mean swallowing a bitter compromise.
The seasick passenger on an ocean liner detests the good sailor who stalks past him 265 times a day grandly smoking a large, greasy cigar. In precisely the same way the democrat hates the man who is having a better time in the world. This is the origin of democracy. It is also the origin of Puritanism.
A democratic state is not proven by the welfare of the strong but by the welfare of the weak.
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.
Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn’t like. It has no resemblance to democracy.
Politics in a democracy is, at the end, an educational process.
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people – the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
The principles of the SPD have remained the same for 150 years: democracy, human dignity, justice and inclusion. We will never change those principles.
politicians … turn patriotism into shopkeeping and their own interest – men who care far more for who governs us than for how we are governed.. And what will be the end of such ways? I will tell you. We shall have a Democracy that will be the reign of those who know the least and talk the loudest.
It is past time for the U.S. government to fully fulfill our moral obligation to those who have fought for freedom and democracy.
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!
We still have a lot of work to do when it comes to democracy. We have political democracy but not economic democracy.
There are these two kinds of patriotism. There’s blind patriotism, unflagging patriotism. And then there’s the patriotism that says I live in a democracy and it’s very important for the health and the life of this democracy that it get better all the time, not get worse.
The old fundamental principles must continue to apply, even in our changing society: Democracy knows neither master nor slave. Equal education opportunities for all, no matter where they come from and no matter who their parents are. Equal access as well when it comes to digitalization.
Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival.
The problem with American democracy is the American corporation, which is a slave holder construct, pure and simple. It’s totally invasive, and people are as tightly controlled within the walls of a corporation as they are in a totalitarian society.
We could not bring democracy and freedom to Vietnam at a cost acceptable to ourselves. The idea that that was what we were trying to do, is again, a tautology, it’s true by definition because we were doing, and the state is noble by definition. That’s called “extreme liberalism”.
NATO is based on shared values. Democracy, individual civil liberties and the rule of law. In public and also in meetings with the allies, I have repeatedly pointed out how crucial these common values are. They are the basis for our unity, and unity is the most important basis for our strength.
Democracy means despair of finding any heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them.
A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
I wrote the tunes. I was the driving force. The rest were quite happy just to go along with things. But it was more of a democracy then.
I’m very proud that we stood for the proposition that no man, woman or child should ever have to live in tyranny. We believed in democracy and promoted it.
When people first vote for democracy, they have extremely high hopes, excessive expectations, and they’re not realized. They don’t instantly get richer and the schools don’t instantly get better and the garbage isn’t instantly picked up quicker. So they get disillusioned.
It’s possible to go faster than folk are ready for; that’s the key to democracy.
The greatest characters the world has known, have rose on the democratic floor. Aristocracy has not been able to keep a proportionate pace with democracy.
We can no longer allow multinationals to parade as agents of progress and democracy in the newspapers, even as they subvert it at the workplace.
In the United States, unlike any other advanced democracy, money really talks. Our Supreme Court has said that spending money on politicians is a form of free speech. No other court has said that.
Voting in particular is an embarrassment, being a public display of weak character and low intelligence. Let us face the truth: Democracy, like spitting in public or the Roman games, is the proper activity of the lower intellectual and moral classes. It amounts to collusion in one’s own suckering.
The reality is that we are hated not because of our democracy, freedoms, and generous social security system; rather, we are hated because of our involvement in foreign conflicts and quarrels that were never our concern.
As the largest and most developed democracies of Asia (India and Japan), we have a mutual stake in each other’s progress and prosperity.
The act of voting by ordinary Iraqis in the face of extreme danger confirms President Bush’s belief that people around the globe, when given a chance, will choose liberty and democracy over enslavement and tyranny.
Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.
There will instead be a number of fake opposition figures, one of whom is now probably going to be Kseniya Sobchak, which is an absurd idea. I assume she’s been chosen because just even the idea of her standing for liberals so makes fun of the idea of liberals and of liberal democracy.
We can speak of the triumph of capitalism in the world, but we cannot yet speak about the triumph of democracy. There is a serious mismatch between the political and the economic conditions that prevail in the world today.
But I think we need to remember that democracy everywhere is by its nature incomplete, a work in progress.
The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.
In America, unlike England, unlike Israel, unlike Japan, other democracies, we have elections that have staggered terms.
Despite what the pundits want us to think, contested primaries aren’t civil war, they are democracy at work, and that’s beautiful.
This country has always been run by elite, and it’s an elitist democracy. And that’s not a radical concept. It’s elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don’t talk – really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.
Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies-hunger, misery, and despair.
Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.
If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.
The strategic partnership between the European Union and the United States is rooted in our shared values of freedom, human rights, democracy and a belief in the market economy.
Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Our democracy if self-cleansing. If you don’t like it, be a candidate, or support a candidate.
The U.S. and its allies will do anything they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world.
We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.
Democracy cannot be imposed on any nation from the outside. Each society must search for its own path, and no path is perfect.
Democracy in itself does not define or guarantee a free society. History has told many stories of democratic societies that have degenerated into corruption, plunder, and tyranny.
Democracy is hard work.
Moreover, as we live in an era of the ascendancy of democracy and human rights, we must see that Taiwan has been a vibrant democracy with a democratically elected president and legislature.
Organized religion, wielding power over the community, is antithetical to the process of what modern democracy should define as liberty. The sooner we are without it, the better.
It is obvious, I think, that national democracy withers. This has to do with globalisation.
In Venezuela, we either accept domination, total oppression and torture… from Maduro’s regime, or we choose freedom, democracy, and prosperity for our people.
I believe that it is essential to our leadership in the world and to the development of true democracy in our country to have no discrimination in our country whatsoever. This is most important in the schools of our country.
The many refugees are not a Greek or German problem. They are a European problem. We should therefore develop a common strategy. That’s why I am launching a cross-border movement for more democracy.
I think my most important advice is to understand what are the foundations of a healthy democracy and how we have to engage in citizenship continuously, not just when something upsets us; not just when there’s an election or when an issue pops up for a few weeks. It’s hard work.
I’m a huge fan of the program Democracy Now, which is hosted by Amy Goodman, and I subscribe to the podcast.
Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths – animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies – or it will dwindle and pale.
I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.
We must occupy the food system to create food democracy.
The road to democracy may be winding and is like a river taking many curves, but eventually the river will reach the ocean.
As someone who lived under communism for most of my life I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by the threat of ambitious environmentalism.
Our goal in Iraq is victory. Our goal is for a young democracy to be able to sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself and serve as an ally in the war on terror.
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
Democracy may become frenzied, but it has feelings and can be moved. As for aristocracy, it is always cold and never forgives.
Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally.Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second—if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.
If Republican leaders are willing to enable Trump’s autocratic enthusiasms in return for oligarchy, American democracy will die.
The Arab Spring showed that people are not going to wait for an American president to make good on his big talk about democracy and human rights; they are going to fight for those rights themselves and overthrow pro-American dictators who stand in their way.
Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you’re told.
In a democracy, a man who does not listen cannot lead.
I hate war… for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it.
Two significant developments in the past several decades have been the collapse of communism as an ideology and the general acceptance, in rhetoric, if not practice, of liberal democracy.
The problem with the West is that they start with political reform going towards democracy. If you want to go towards democracy, the first thing is to involve the people in decision making, not to make it.
Democracies don’t prepare well for things that have never happened before.
Western-style multi-party democracy is possible but not suitable for Africa.
Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.
Men are more easily governed through their vices than through their virtues.
Our culture is at a critical cusp – a time that requires that we define what it means to be a citizen in a democracy. Within our nation we need to foster a greater sense of collective responsibility.
I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.
Democracy is a problem and we don’t want to get rid of it.
Tradition has to be retaken by the liberal forces, so that they can show their values of tolerance and democracy not as novel western ideas but as ones indigenous to Pakistan, as a part of its very creation.
One unanswered question is whether a Euro-Islam that combines Islam with democracy will be possible in the future. We mustn’t confuse desire with reality.
To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy.
Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.
This living in a democracy is a problem, isn’t it?
There does not have to be trade-off between growth and social protection. A democracy does not mean much if it doesn’t respond to the needs and will of its people.
In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.
America is not a democracy. I think if your kids understood that – and most people don’t. We are a representative republic. We’re not a direct democracy.
America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams.
She [Hillary Clinton] put her emails on a secret server to cover up her pay-for-play scandals in the State Department. Nothing threatens the integrity of our democracy more than when government officials put their public office up for sale.
I dream of a time when the people will retake their airways and use them to achieve a voice to rediscover democracy, and to see the divine potential of man.
Who would have guessed that the monster of fraud was a democracy?
Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.
It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or consuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy, or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa, as we read was done in Rome.
A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinising and pressing to get the truth out.
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.
[N]o democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine.
In the early 2000s, people expected that anonymity on the Internet would be positive for the development of democracy in South Korea. In a Confucian culture like South Korea’s, hierarchy can block the free exchange of opinions in face-to-face situations. The web offered a way around that.
Skill development, speed and scale are the 3 important aspects that are relevant to the present-day growth and development module.
I think that it’s a vital moment now for Russian democracy to convince people that it’s only our actions, our joined actions and protests that could force Kremlin to reconsider its plans to abolish presidential elections.
The first step toward liberation of any group is to use the power in hand… And the power in hand is the vote.
That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the world.
There is an idea of democracy produced by one-sided thinking.
My submission to you is we’re fighting the war on terror not overseas but in our own streets, and we’d be spending vast more fortunes to try to be a defensive country to protect ourselves rather than an offensive country to spread democracy wherever people yearn for it.
I think that our own crisis of democracy is in its own way affecting our ability to leverage in the same way that we used to in the world.
There are only two reasons for buying a book, after all. Either we intend to read it, in which case most of us find a printed version preferable, or we don’t intend to read it, in which case a printed version is absolutely essential.
Rwanda is a democracy not a monarchy.
The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts – that is where the battle should be fought.
There is a vulgar persuasion, that the ignorance of women, by favoring their subordination, ensures their utility. ‘Tis the same argument employed by the ruling few against the subject many in aristocracies; by the rich against the poor in democracies; by the learned professions against the people in all countries.
The eradication of the Muslim Brotherhood is nothing less than an abolition of democracy and a guarantee that Arabs will continue living under authoritarian and corrupt regimes.
Politicians that proclaim big words without meaning rule in democracy. At best they allow themselves to discover that it’s better to be rich and healthy than sick and poor and that it is necessary to care for ‘good of Poland” – clap clap, hurricane of clapping.
Reformist kings can save their dynasties now by helping their countries move smoothly into democracy, or they will end their years in exile like the Russian aristocrats of a century earlier.
Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.
I’d like to teach Iraq about Democracy because we’re so experienced with it. First they should know that after 100 years they should free their slaves. Then after 150 years they should give their women the right to vote. Oh, and of course when they start it all they should begin with some genocide and ethnic cleansing.
Journalism, like democracy, is not something that is achieved. It is a work in progress, and not every day is as good as the last.
You know what? I think the American people are a little pissed, and I think they’re pissed at both parties – I think they’re really pissed at both parties – and it will be reflected during election time.
This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That’s democracy for you.
I have tremendous confidence in the ability of government institutions and the American people to do what is right to make sure that our democracy stays on the right track.
On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had.
There can be no real growth without healthy populations. No sustainable development without tackling disease and malnutrition. No international security without assisting crisis-ridden countries. And no hope for the spread of freedom, democracy and human dignity unless we treat health as a basic human right.
Speaking as a Democrat, all my life battling for what I conceived to be Democracy, and what I conceived to be right, I am yet an American above Democracy.
Unrestrained zeal to make the world better could make it worse. Promoting democracy must be undertaken with humility, care, and wisdom.
Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life.
A fool and his money are soon elected.
Why is it when we have 10 million people in this country who say ‘No’, we still have a president who says ‘Yes.’ In a democracy, something’s wrong here.
Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism.
The defence of democracy must consist in making anti-democratic experiences too costly for those who try them; much more costly than a democratic compromise
Even the Founding Fathers of the U.S., nowadays considered the model of a democracy, were strictly opposed to it. Without a single exception, they thought of democracy as nothing but mob-rule.
n Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.
Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich — that is the democracy of capitalist society.
Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.
I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities.
Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
Islam was nothing if it did not spell complete democracy.
We all need to provide the checks and balances for democracy.
The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control – ‘indoctrination’, we might say – exercised through the mass media.
Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.
I’m advocating that American citizens interested in democracy should stay out of chain stores.
Since the revolution of the 18th century, America has basically had an ideology of liberal democracy and constitutionalism.
We must take proactive steps to promote democracy and human rights abroad.
We need to give the Iraqis a chance to build their own future. It should be in their hands. It must be in their hands. That is what democracy is all about. We can teach it, we can explain it, but they must want it enough to make it work for them.
I hope you realize, in a democracy, laughter is assent.
The return of democracy in our land has indeed thrown the problems of development into bolder relief.
After all, we didn’t bring democracy to Germany in 1945; Hitler destroyed democracy there first.
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It’s where we learn to share; it’s where we learn to argue without offending. It’s just too critical to let go, as we’ve been so blithely doing.
The point about democracy is not that it delivers legitimate, effective, prosperous rule of law. It’s not that it guarantees peace with itself or with its neighbors. … Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality.
Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.
Intellectual freedom is the only guarantee of a scientific – democratic approach to politics, economic development, and culture.
The will of the nation is one of those phrases most widely abused by schemers and tyrants of all ages.
The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.
We certainly hoped perestroika would win out and that there would be changes. We knew all along that socialism could flourish only with a certain amount of freedom and democracy.
What good is democracy if you can’t get what you want?
I would not like to be a political leader in Russia. They never know when they’re being taped.
Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village.
American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.
I told the students that we can exert pressure without resorting to violence, and that we can move towards democracy without violence; that way, God will allow it.
Many of our ideas of democracy, so much of our literature and philosophy and science can be traced back to roots right here in Athens.
I will not be standing for office. I’m nearing 70; there are younger people within our movement. I just wish to contribute intellectually to the historic process of taking Tunisia from the era of repression to one of democracy.
Free enterprise democracy has proven the best system by far for maximizing freedom, prosperity, and happiness. Dictatorship, Soviet style communism, and hereditary aristocracy have proven about the worst environments for people to achieve all three of these goals.
The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
Citizens of the democratic societies should undertake a course of intellectual self defense to protect themselves from manipulation and control, and to lay the basis for meaningful democracy.
I don’t see democracy getting better. I see democracy diminishing. More rules, more legislation. Eventually governments will see everything.
I cannot help concurring with the opinion that an absolute democracy, no more than absolute monarchy, is to be reckoned among the legitimate forms of government.
It’s all these pundits, all these consultants, and the candidates, as if they’re in a bubble leaving democracy off-limits.
Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.
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.
Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.
Don’t be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully, and more systematically what you have done badly.
I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another.
In America, our origins matter less than our destination, and that is what democracy is all about.
Democracy is made up of three elements. One is whether the laws support pluralistic principles. The second is whether the people take advantage of these laws. The third element is whether the peoples’ wallets are thick enough to benefit from this democracy.
The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of 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 doesn’t just consist of holding elections.
The majority of Arab people see the United States and Israel (definitely not Iran or Syria) as the greatest danger to the world. Could you imagine what the Arab people would do if true democracy (rule of the people) were to be victorious?
America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.
Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy – judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes – because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.
It’s sad. Marxism didn’t work. Communism didn’t work. Capitalism doesn’t work. Nothing works. Even democracy doesn’t work. Democracy-the greatest form of government and we have two choices for who’s our leader. In fascism you only have one choice. That’s great. We have one more choice than the worst form of government.
What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can’t afford to buy a hamburger?
American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict….We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare
I do believe that what I have called populist democracy is to be preferred to what I have called elitist democracy.
Popularity and democracy aren’t a judge, they’re just stats.
… woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.
Those of us who decided to work for democracy in Burma made our choice in the conviction that the danger of standing up for basic human rights in a repressive society was preferable to the safety of a quiescent life in servitude
If democracy is to be an articulation of mutual respect, a leader in a democracy leads by showing respect to all.
Aristotle might not recognize it, or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?
I have great confidence in Taiwan’s democracy. I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights, and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan.
In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual toward the species are much clearer, devotion toward one man becomes rarer: the bond of human affections is extended and loosened.
America is at war with itself because it’s basically declared war not only on any sense of democratic idealism, but it’s declared war on all the institutions that make democracy possible. And we see it with the war on public schools. We see it with the war on education. We see it with the war on the healthcare system.
I want a capital-earning democracy. Every man and woman a capitalist. Housing is the start. If you’re a man or woman of property, you’ve got something. So every man a capitalist, and every man a man of property.
[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.
For us democracy is a question of human dignity. And human dignity is political freedom.
There is still another inconvenieney in conquests made by democracies; their government is ever odious to the conquered states. It is apparently monarchical, but in reality it is more oppressive than monarchy, as the experience of all ages and countries evinces.
People in a democracy should be satisfied with drawing the Government’s attention to a mistake, if any.
stop spying on the lawful citizenry. Democracy and dossiers go ill together. It is all right for God but all wrong for the State to keep its eye on sparrows.
Democracy may not be perfect, but at least I don’t have to build a wall to keep my people in.
I’m a patriot, and I think democracy is the best system available. It’s very flawed, but it works better than anything else.
As it is now, decades after 1965, the people of Indonesia have no clue about any other system except their own, or about true democracy.
Pakistans future viability, stability and security lie in empowering its people and building political institutions. My goal is to prove that the fundamental battle for the hearts and minds of a generation can be accomplished only under democracy.
Most Americans do really think that Muslims all want to take over and they don’t want democracy and they want nothing but Islamic law.
We see threats to liberal democracy coming from lots of directions. We have to create something new, a common response, because in so many places – the UK, France, Germany – ultranationalists and the far left threaten the free market and liberal democracy.
Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.
Democracies are not very stable.
If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.
Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise.
Within the existing neoliberal historical conjuncture, there is a merging of violence and governance and the systemic disinvestment in and breakdown of institutions and public spheres that have provided the minimal conditions for democracy.
Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.
Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law.
A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.
A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.
Democracy is messy, and it’s hard. It’s never easy.
In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers, and oligarchy in which the rich; it is only an accident that the free are the many and the rich are the few.
You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.
The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.
The intolerant man will not rely on persuasion, or on the worth of the idea. He would deny to others the very freedom of opinion or of dissent which he so stridently demands for himself. He cannot trust democracy.
In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.
It’s politely assumed that democracy is a means of containing and restraining violence. But violence comes not from genes but from ideas
Islam is not an excuse for thwarting democracy.
If democracy as we know it has to survive the elites have to regain their credibility. And they have to start by admitting that their economic model is broken.
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.
My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.
I always believe that ultimately, if people are paying attention, then we get good government and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts, then it results in bad government and politics.
Many who have voted for the AfD, or who intend to do so, aren’t doing so because they are dyed-in-the-wool enemies of democracy. Rather, they are desperate.
In our democracy every young person should have an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of his station in life or financial means.
If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.
Democracy was assassinated here when Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. And who brought democracy back to this country? We are the ones who did that after pushing out the dictatorship in 1997.
Our democracy flourishes when people stand up for themselves and engage in the political process.
Many do not understand how precarious Western civilization is and what a joy it is. From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you.
The dynamic ideal we call democracy, gradually growing up in the human heart for two-thousand five hundred years, at least, has now every opportunity to found the natural democratic state in these United States of America by way of natural economic order and a natural, or organic, architecture.
We know that Russia was involved in hacking our democracy. We know that the evidence or information is sufficient to warrant an FBI investigation of this. We are trying to do as much of this as we can in the public eye transparently. Obviously, some of it will have to be done in closed session.
The history of warfare has not yet enabled any army, any civilized army, the army of a democracy like Israel, to be able to deal with a ruthless terrorist enemy that uses civilians as a human shield without having some incidental civilian casualties.
Political institutions are fair game in political debates in a democracy. Nothing is more fair game, in fact, than political matters of public concern.
Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.
Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.
The US States are our laboratories of democracy.
China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.
If you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in people’s rights, if you believe in the harmony of all humankind – then you have no choice but to back Fidel Castro as long as it takes!
In America, we’ve got to get back to these base principles of what democracy is.
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
All such men are, or ought to be, agreed, that simple governments are despotisms; and of all despotisms, a democracy, though the least durable, is the most violent.
I stand on the shoulders of giants that have gone before me, in terms of affording people like myself, women, the access to democracy, the vote, medical treatment, education, everything that I’ve been given. It’s all been earned.
This philosophy of hate, of religious and racial intolerance, with its passionate urge toward war, is loose in the world. It is the enemy of democracy; it is the enemy of all the fruitful and spiritual sides of life. It is our responsibility, as individuals and organizations, to resist this.
In a perfect world what poor countries at the lowest rungs of economic development need is not a multi-party democracy, but in fact a decisive benevolent dictator to push through the reforms required to get the economy moving
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.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.
Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
We must recognize the fundamental rights of man. There can be no true national life in our democracy unless we give unqualified recognition to freedom of religious worship and freedom of education.
Democracy is like a tambourine, not everyone can be trusted with it.
If you want to be a Jewish state and you want to remain a democracy, you have to have a two-state solution.
The people is always expressive of the truth. The life of a people cannot be a lie.
A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.
Democracy is essentially anti-authoritarian–that is, it not only demands the right but imposes the responsibility of thinking for ourselves.
Men will wrangle for religion, write for it, fight for it, die for it; anything but live for it.
Since outright slavery has been discredited, “democracy” is the only remaining rationale for state compulsion that most people will accept.
Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.
The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war… The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
If I like somebody else’s tribe I’m going to promote the hell out of it. The whole thing is a democracy, and if somebody’s more popular then good luck to them.
Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal.
Democracy is never a final achievement. It is a call to an untiring effort.
My parents told us how they felt but never imposed their beliefs on us, although I appreciate I got a healthy sense of democracy from them.
