Quotes About Democracy

Presidential elections and the voter experience have long been fraught for black people. From racist poll taxes to made-up literacy tests to the egregious rollback of voting rights over the past 50 years, American democracy has, at times, felt like a weird and failed social experiment.

In a democracy, allegations will never improve situations. So, I'm against allegations, but I always welcome criticism.

Obama's openness is a welcome change from his predecessor, who went all the way to the Supreme Court to hide the RSVP list for a single policy meeting. And transparency is intrinsically good, since in a democracy, very little government activity is legitimately secret.

I would welcome satirical references to political leaders as part of freedom of expression.

If democracy is to survive Facebook, that company must realize the outsized role it now plays as both the public forum where our strident democratic drama unfolds and as the vehicle for those who aspire to control that drama's course. Facebook, welcome to the big leagues.

Irrespective of our foreign policies, for decades, other nations and peoples could see, in the United States, a strong democracy that could maintain social cohesion, welcome immigrants of all backgrounds, and count on stable institutions.

I welcome nonviolent protests as an exercise of our great democracy.

I very happily stand for the right of every man and woman in Pennsylvania to have their voice heard in elections. And when they do have their voice heard, it's nothing short of a privilege to welcome and respect that voice because this is a democracy, and that's what we do.

In a democracy, a person's vote is their voice. For much of our history, however, not everyone's voice was welcome at the voting booth.

Any government that likes to call themselves democratic should welcome Snowden and allow him to live in their country.

Just as an individual of pre-eminent worth transforms democracy into a monarchy of the best man, even so the rule of one man, if in all things it has an eye to the common welfare, is democracy.

This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.

The E.U.'s tax and regulatory policies, climate-change and welfare spending, and free immigration even in wartime are gradually ruining Europe. That's why I believe Brexit is good for British freedom, political autonomy, and the survival of democratic capitalism.

My fundamental concern about the role of faith groups in providing social provision is democratic: how do we hold them to account? To whom are they responsible? How do we, the public, the recipients of welfare, punish them if they make mistakes or become corrupt?

If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.

Ultimately, Boris Johnson and the political and financial support behind his Brexit project are probably the biggest threat to both British democracy and the post-war welfare state settlement we've faced in the post-war period.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

How easy it is to govern when one follows a system of consulting the will of the people and one holds as the only norm all the actions which contribute to the well being of the people.

The story of how Chile, in the decades after its 1973 coup and death of democratically elected socialist president Salvador Allende, became one of the most neoliberal societies on the planet is well known.

I'm a great aficionado of history. I was deeply affected by seeing the disintegration of any chance of democracy coping with fascism in the Weimar republic, where woolly-minded, well-meaning liberalism actually allowed the forces of darkness to use democracy, to exploit democracy, to overturn democracy.

We need a government which, yes, guarantees basic standards in public services, but which also steps in to protect people's wellbeing as they take part in our consumer democracy - particularly online.

I am often reminded that the wellspring of Vermont liberty flows from Main Street, not State Street.

Welsh voices and Welsh communities were heard in 2016 in their tens of thousands, in their droves. They voted to leave the European Union and since then they have had that slapped in their face actually often by Labour MPs who basically said we know better than you.

When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.