Quotes About Democracy

They have not always elected the best leaders, particularly after a long period in which they have not used this facility of free election. You tend to lose the habit.

In many countries, schools are preparing students to participate in a democratic environment; yet schools themselves tend to be extremely autocratic, with all high-level decisions being made by adults.

We tend in this country to talk about Democrats and Republicans, and think there's little group over there called Independents that's maybe 2%. That is not the case, and it has not been the case for most of modern American history.

How can this full, perfect, just and supreme voice of the people, embodied in the Constitution, be brought to bear, habitually and steadily, in counteracting the fatal tendency of the government to the absolute and despotic control of the numerical majority?

The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

Remember, until the 1970s, the spread of democracy has always been accompanied by the decline of inequality. The more democratic our societies have been, the more equal they have been becoming. Now we have the reverse tendency. The spread of democracy now is very much accompanied by the increase in inequality.

Democracy for us tends to be has to do with who shouts the loudest!

Representative democracy is a remarkably blunt instrument. Hundreds of issues are bundled together at every election, yet the vote tends to swing on just one or two of them.

Today's average American is more apt to rebel against a tennis shoe not coming in the right color than against the slow erosion of our democratic freedom.

Nigeria shed the last of a succession of brutal military dictatorships in 1997 and adopted a democratic form of government only in 1999. Our elections of 2003, 2007, and 2011 were complicated and fraught with tension, but each one has shown remarkable progress.

In a democracy there will always be a tension between security and privacy.

There is a tension between parliamentary and popular sovereignty. A lively, meaningful democracy would achieve a balance between the two.

At the heart of both democracy and capitalism is a simple assumption that, across the board, people make free and relatively rational decisions: that we are, to borrow a medical term, Gillick Competent.

I believe that the presidential term should be limited.

We can't have a third Obama term, which is what electing Hillary Clinton would do.

We need term limits desperately in this country.

The 22nd Amendment should probably be modified to say two consecutive terms instead of two terms for a lifetime.

We believe - most polls indicate - a lack of support, a lack of confidence in the ability of the Congress to work. That is disturbing in terms of our general democracy.

When a political advocacy network hires a former CIA analyst and starts tailing save-our-parks activists, you know there's something terribly dangerous happening to our democracy.

When you have corporate influence on our government outweighing the influence of citizens, that's terrifying. This is something we have to make a big, big noise about.

America had the message of freedom and democracy, but we haven't actually shown that to be what we do in the world. So I think that's a terrifying thing.

Hong Kong is the city with the highest degree of freedom of all the Chinese territories.

Back in 2014, my fellow Hong Kongers and I hoped to use nonviolent means to fight for our territory's democratic system - a simple right, promised by Beijing, to choose our own leader.