Quotes About Democracies

Similarly, dubbing everyone whose reading of history leads them to conclusions different from the preferred ones black-armband historians; channelling frustrations felt by the politically powerless to the politically correct; isolating chattering classes and elites from a pretended mainstream – all these and many terms of political abuse are common and inevitable in democracies – and all have parallels in tyrannies.

It turns out that human beings yearn not only for freedom, autonomy, individuality, and recognition. Especially in times of difficulty, they also yearn for security, order, and a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves, something that submerges autonomy and individuality—which autocracies often provide better than democracies.

We once again man the barricades -- alone. Berated by our smug, so-called allies, of the Western Democracies. Islam is going to turn this world inside out before this century is out and you'd better have enough guts to deal with it.

The greatest moral failing of meritocracy is the belief that your success, your higher perch in society, makes you superior in any fundamental sense. After all, in democracies, at least, the people's wishes are the ultimate source of authority. So, let's be clear, as we navigate this pandemic and future crises, people need to listen to the experts. But the experts also need to listen to the people.

The fight against terror is a common imperative for democracies and must become so for all nations.

Democracies don't fight each other. Terrorists don't tend to come from places where they feel like they have recourse in a political system.

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 to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world.

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic.

American, Swiss, and Japanese taxpayers are pretty honest. So are most of the other Western European democracies. Greece, Spain, and Italy are not. In fact, the level of tax evasion in Greece is such that the country's deficit—which is so large that Greece has teetered on the brink of outright bankruptcy for years—would all but disappear if Greek citizens obeyed the law and paid what they owed.

You can't accommodate a hundred different opinions, and you can't ignore them. All you can do is provide people with the illusion that they participated in the decision. For some reason, that's enough to make people happy. This is the basis for all democracies.

Basic decisions of our society are made through the expressed will of the people. That is why when we see these liberties threatened, instead of falling apart, our nation becomes unified and our democracies come together... in spite of our varied backgrounds and many racial strains.

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.

Liberal democracies do not and often cannot respond in kind to cyberattacks on their own way of governance.

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.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

The Soviet Union used the exploitation of workers under capitalism as an agitational issue to subvert Western democracies even as it practiced slave labor at home.

I believe India and Israel should focus on building bilateral relations on the basis of shared perspectives and commonalities between our two democracies. This has to be a forward-looking exercise rather than harking back to perceptions of the past.

It is so important for European countries, post-Second World War, to prove that they can be successful multiethnic and multiracial democracies. I think we in Britain have had great success in avoiding the hatreds and prejudices of the past.

The Kremlin hacked our presidential election, is waging a cyberwar against our NATO allies, and is probing opportunities to use similar tactics against democracies worldwide. Why, then, are federal agencies, local and state governments, and millions of Americans unwittingly inviting this threat into their cyber networks and secure spaces?

I think India should be our top ally in Asia Pacific. And the two countries have so much in common, including being the largest and most powerful democracies.

Perpetual Peace," Kant laid out measures that would discourage leaders from dragging their countries into war.20 Together with international commerce, he recommended representative republics (what we would call democracies), mutual transparency, norms against conquest and internal interference, freedom of travel and immigration, and a federation of states that would adjudicate disputes between them.

Inequality is the deepest of problems, built into the structure of reality itself, and will not be solved by the presumptuous, ideology-inspiring retooling of the rare free, stable and productive democracies of the world.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.