Quotes About Democracy

É dispensável dizer que, na falta do direito de exercer oposição, o direito de "participar" é despido de boa parte do significado que tem num país onde existe a contestação pública. '' P. 25 ''Consideremos, então, a democratização como formada por pelo menos duas dimensões: contestação pública e direito de participação'' P.26

Warum ist eigentlich das demokratische System besser?... Es ist besser, weil es die volle Entwicklung des Menschen als Individuum möglich macht. Aber... das zeigt nur, daß die Demokratie eine >angenehmere< Form der Regierung ist [...].

I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism of the family. I believe in liberty, equality and love .

Barcelona has always been more a city of capital and labor than of nobility and commoners; its democratic roots are old and run very deep. Its medieval charter of citizens' rights, the Usatges, grew from a nucleus which antedated the Magna Carta by more than a hundred years. Its government, the Consell de Cent (Council of One Hundred), had been the oldest protodemocratic political body in Spain.

because, after all the struggles to reconstruct democracy in Chile and having endured so much suffering, people needed a new source of hope. It dawned on me that the resurrection stories of the appearances of Jesus might just hold the key to hope. The lectures were presented as examples of "master narratives" into which we can put our own stories.

Democracy has spread and endured because it has been nurtured and supported: by the norms of the liberal order, by global pressures and inducements to conform to those norms, by the membership requirements of liberal institutions like the EU and NATO, by the fact that the liberal order has been the wealthiest part of the world, and by the security provided by the world's strongest power, which happens to be a democracy.

The threat to democracy is increasingly within the West.

the psyche of the man who is adequately accessing the Warrior is organized around his central commitment. This commitment eliminates a great deal of human pettiness. Living in the light of lofty ideals and spiritual realities such as God, democracy, communism, freedom, or any other worthy transpersonal commitment, so alters the focus of a man's life that petty squabbling and personal Ego concerns no longer matter much.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

But having said that, what's happening with campaign finance reform and our political culture is devastating.

America today is less a democracy and more an oligarchy.

But in every church there are people who, for reasons which seem sufficient to them, do not approve of their pastor and seek to harry him and bully him into some condition pleasing to themselves. The democracy which the Reformation brought into the Christian Church rages in their bosoms like a fire; they would deny that they regard their clergyman as their spiritual hired hand, whom they boss and oversee for his own good, but that is certainly the impression they give to observers.

It needs to be emphasized that the Church vigorously advocated and defended democracy in northern Italy. Not only did the Church unequivocally assert moral equality, but it also ventured into the political arena, with bishops and cardinals playing a leading role on behalf of expanding the franchise.

Keep in mind that democracy merely gives power to the people; it does not ensure that power will be used wisely or humanely.

As one of China's leading economists put it, "in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful. The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don't have any doubt about this."42 Neither do I.

Given that Europe's legacy to the world consists in the two great goods of Christianity and democracy it is hardly surprising if the EU no longer has the endorsement of the European people, even if it has created a network of clients upon whose support it can always rely.

Toleration means being prepared to accept opinions that you intensely dislike. Likewise democracy means consenting to be governed by people whom you intensely dislike. This

was calculated to kill off democracy.

Western democracies did not create the virtue of citizenship; on the contrary, they grew from it. Nothing is more evident in The Federalist than the public spirit that it puts in play, in opposition to factions, cabals and private scheming. As

I have argued that the political process, as we in Western democracies have inherited it, depends upon citizenship, which in turn depends upon a viable first-person plural. And in the previous chapter I gave what to me are incontrovertible arguments for construing that first-person plural in national terms. No such first-person plural can emerge in a society divided against itself, in which local antagonisms and class war eclipse every understanding of a shared destiny.

the good citizen is the one who knows when voting is the wrong way to decide a question, as well as when voting is the right way. For

Democracies have a natural tendency to turn against their saviours. It happened to Winston Churchill. It happened to Charles de Gaulle and it happened to Margaret Thatcher. It was not the faults of those great leaders that caused their downfall, but their virtues

Those experiences helped to convince me that European civilization depends upon the maintenance of national borders, and that the EU, which is a conspiracy to dissolve those borders, has become a threat to European democracy.

Observing the volatile nature of the new democracies, I came vividly to see how unimportant a part of democracy are elections, in comparison with the enduring institutions and public spirit that make elected politicians accountable.