Quotes About Democracy

Facebook and its counterparts don't operate like courts; there is no case law, no checks and balances, and—until recently—no due process. The judges (content moderators) are not appointed or elected by voters, unlike in well-functioning democracies. There are simply no systems of accountability to the process and, as such, the same image that might be banned for one user can be allowed for another.

In view of China's growing military strength and intentions, the best way to safeguard Asia's permanent peace and prosperity is to have all Asian countries join forces with other democratic countries in the world to form a global community of democracies.

We know from our own history that democratic institutions take decades to mature, and we know from past conflicts that freedom is not free.

Some people say we need a third party. I wish we had a second one.

Shortly before his death in July 2009, Cronkite was asked if there was a ruling class in America. "I am afraid there is," he replied. "I don't think it serves the democracy well, but that is true, I think there is. The ruling class is the rich who really command our industry, our commerce, our finance. And those people are able to so manipulate our democracy that they really control the democracy, I feel.

in-the-mud. He rarely wanted to talk about anything other than politics or legislative business. He liked to drink, but even when drunk he was usually all business."5 Burton was that rare force in American democracy: a ruthless ideologue. He came up through the competitive ranks of political infighting in San Francisco, where cultural forgiveness masked bitter, hand-to-hand political struggle. As a member of

The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

The best way to enhance freedom in other lands is to demonstrate here that our democratic system is worthy of emulation.

I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

We can't equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense… human rights invented America.

Alexis de Tocqueville, observing that "there was hardly a political question in the United States that did not sooner or later turn into a judicial one."1

This is true of the birth of democracy, too. Indeed, the novelty of democratic rule would not have been conceivable without the intense awareness of the common bond forged by shared genealogy as fostered by religion.

Democracy is an ongoing conversation between the governed and their governors; it should come as no surprise that dramatic changes in the modes of conversation cause dramatic changes in democracies themselves.

Well, you know, too much democracy is a sort of sad thing.

Global markets must be balanced by global values such as respect for human rights and international law, democracy, security and sustainable economic and environmental development.

In its secular forms, then, this cosmological politics exceeds Christianity; to be an American, you must convert, not to Christianity, but to American democracy.

The bottom line is that 'Russia can either be an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both.'19 If Ukraine does not stay independent, in other words, Russia will not remain a democracy, so Ukrainian independence is as much for Russia's good as Ukraine's. Russians, of course, have some difficulty taking this concept on board.

Modern democratic institutions, built for an era with very different information technology, provide little comfort for those who are angered by the dissonance. Voting, campaigning, the formation of coalitions—all of this seems retrograde in a world where other things happen so quickly.

Above all, the old newspapers and broadcasters created the possibility of a single national conversation. In many advanced democracies there is now no common debate, let alone a common narrative. People have always had different opinions. Now they have different facts.

The founders themselves were not so certain: their beloved classical authors taught them that history was circular, that human nature was flawed, and that special measures were needed to prevent democracy from sliding back into tyranny.

Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all of our societies eventually will.

wrote that freedom of the press "is a deception." He mocked freedom of assembly as a "hollow phrase." As for parliamentary democracy itself, that was no more than "a machine for the suppression of the working class." In the Bolshevik imagination, the press could be free, and public institutions could be fair, only once they were controlled by the working class—via the party.