Quotes About Democracy

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

I rejoice with you in the success, which has thus far attended the cause. Yet in all our rejoicings, let us neither express nor cherish any hard feelings toward any citizen who by his vote has differed with us. Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling.

Our government rests in public opinion. Whoever can change public opinion can change the government.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

As to your proposals that a poll shall be opened in every precinct, and that the whole shall take place on the same day, I do not personally object.

In leaving the people's business in their hands, we cannot be wrong.

From the colonial era, the major legacy Europe left to Africa was not democracy as it is practiced today in countries like England, France, and Belgium; it was authoritarian rule and plunder.

Suppose that government is founded on contract, and that these powers are entrusted to persons who grossly abuse them, it is evident that resistance is lawful, because the original contract is now broken. But we showed before that government was founded on the principles of utility and authority. We also showed that the principle of authority is more prevalent in a monarchy, and that of utility in a democracy, from their frequent attendance on public meetings and courts of justice.

The Westminster government continued to aggravate the situation by haughty mismanagement, and on 4 July 1776 the Congress passed a Declaration of Independence from Britain. This was a constitutionally dubious act with no real democratic basis. Only one in five of the inhabitants of the colonies was in any sense active in the cause of independence, and there were at least 500,000 declared loyalists (out of a total population of 2,500,000) at the beginning of the war.

The democratic and civic instinct in that part of Europe today is largely the product of the two decades of freedom secured by Pi?sudski and his armies on the Vistula in 1920.

Ott a legjobb a szÅ'lÅ', ahol honos. Ott érti meg az ember legjobban a demokrácia lényegét, ahol honos.

Uniquely in the history of the world, Americans in the late eighteenth century constituted themselves as a people and as a nation in a series of epic and self-conscious acts of democratic self-invention. In 1776, thirteen British North American colonies renounced their common parent and created what would later become the world's mightiest power.

You're not supposed to have to be rich or lucky to have a chance to do great things. Opportunity is supposed to be for everyone. And that's why I'm a Democrat.

I've always believed that it's possible to discern true statements from false statements, and that it's critically important to do so, and that we put our entire democratic experiment in peril when we don't. It's a lesson I fear our nation is about to learn the hard way. That's

How could that be what America chose?

This was the point made by Jon Stewart, the brilliant host of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, when he visited CNN's Crossfire: There should be a distinction between news and entertainment. It really matters. The subjugation of news by entertainment seriously harms our democracy: It leads to dysfunctional journalism that fails to inform the people. And when the people are not informed, they cannot hold government accountable when it is incompetent, corrupt, or both.

Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—was and remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

The good news is we know what to do. The good news is we have everything we need now to respond to the challenge of global warming. We have all the technologies we need, though more and better ones are being developed, and as they become available and become more affordable when produced in scale, they will make it easier to respond. We have everything we need—save perhaps political will. And in our democracy, political will is a renewable resource.

Whatever modern democracies may tell themselves about their commitment to free speech and to diversity of opinion, the values of a given society will uncannily match those of whichever organizations have the scale to pay for runs of thirty-second slots around the nightly news bulletin.

If engineering cannot tell us what our houses should look like, nor in a pluralistic and non-deferential world can precedent or tradition, we must be free to pursue all stylistic options. We should acknowledge that the question of what is beautiful is both impossible to elucidate and shameful and even undemocratic to mention.

In democracies, by contrast, the propaganda of the press and public opinion relentlessly promised servants that they, too, could reach the pinnacles of society and make their fortune as industrialists, judges, scientists or even presidents.

In fact she knew perfectly well (Norman again), but to her everybody's name was immaterial, as indeed was everything else, their clothes, their voice, their class. She was a genuine democrat, perhaps the only one in the country.

modern democracy has been derived from, and can only be justified by, the theological dogmas of Hebraic-Christianity according to which all men are created by God and equal before Him.

our dear old bag of a democracy" is sustained, not by itself, but by belief in something deeper and greater than itself.