Quotes About Democracy

After examining 1,799 policy issues in detail, two eminent researchers, Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Professor Benjamin Page of Northwestern University, concluded that "the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.

The problem is not the size of government but whom the government is for.

The biggest political divide in America today is not between Republicans and Democrats. It's between democracy and oligarchy. Hearing and using the same old labels prevents most people from noticing they're being shafted.

for small donors to participate, but large donors continue to dominate.) Even before the Supreme Court's grotesque 2010 decision

A market—any market—requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market. The

Capitalism's role is to enlarge the economic pie. How the slices are divided and whether they are applied to private goods like personal computers or public goods like clean air is up to society to decide. This is the role we assign to democracy.

Capitalism has become more responsive to what we want as individual purchasers of goods, but democracy has grown less responsive to what we want together as citizens

What's truly immoral is not what adults choose to do with other consenting adults but what those with great power have chosen to do to the rest of us. America's problems have nothing to do with private morality. The breakdown is in public morality—abuses of public trust that undermine the integrity of our economy and democracy

A society where one set of religious views is imposed on a large number of citizens who disagree with them is not a democracy. It's a theocracy. Yet

Republicans want us to believe that the central issue is the size of government, but the real issue is whom government is for. Public

We are perilously close to losing an economy and a democracy that are meant to work for everyone and to replacing them with an economy and a government that will exist mainly for a few wealthy and powerful people.

Companies are not citizens. They are bundles of contracts. The purpose of companies is to play the economic game as aggressively as possible. The challenge for us as citizens is to stop them from setting the rules. Keeping supercapitalism from spilling over into democracy is the only constructive agenda for change. All else, as I shall make clear, is frolic and detour.

As the great jurist and Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once said, "We may have democracy or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

Republicans want us to believe that the central issue is the size of government, but the real issue is whom government is for.

How many billionaires and big corporations does it take to buy the presidency and Congress? We would soon find out—although we would not know many of their names.

The threat to America is not coming from peaceful demonstrators. And it's not coming from a government that's too large. It's coming from unprecedented amounts of money now inundating our democracy, mostly from big corporations and a handful of the super-rich.

We cannot tolerate inordinate wealth for the few along with unbridled money in politics. As the great jurist and Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis once said, "We may have democracy or we may have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

The Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 and its companion, the Clayton Act of 1914, were designed not only to improve economic efficiency by reducing the market power of economic giants like the railroads and oil companies but also to prevent companies from becoming so large that their political power would undermine democracy. Trustbusters during the first decades of the twentieth century tamed American industry and arguably saved capitalism from its own excesses.

Today the great divide is not between left and right. It's between democracy and oligarchy.

A market—any market—requires that government make and enforce the rules of the game. In most modern democracies, such rules emanate from legislatures, administrative agencies, and courts. Government doesn't "intrude" on the "free market." It creates the market.

What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion.

Since the majority is always wrong, might we try one election day where all the losers take office?

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man. I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power, because democracy shapes our lives.