Quotes About Democracy

Democracy ceases to be so if it is governed by permanent majoritarian identities of any kind.

Social and economic inequality was accepted as normal by Vedic Brahmanism and whether one approves or disapproves of it, it was an established point of view. To propagate the texts associated with this assumption and yet insist that they are appropriate to modern values of democracy and secularism is hardly acceptable.

Hamilton's besetting fear was that American democracy would be spoiled by demagogues who would mouth populist shibboleths to conceal their despotism.

Americans often wonder how this moment could have spawned such extraordinary men as Hamilton and Madison. Part of the answer is that the Revolution produced an insatiable need for thinkers who could generate ideas and wordsmiths who could lucidly expound them. The immediate utility of ideas was an incalculable tonic for the founding generation. The fate of the democratic experiment depended upon political intellectuals who might have been marginalized at other periods.

I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy, it's very important that I participate in that.

context, spoke of the threat of a "mobocratic spirit"18 seen in an outbreak of mob violence that

The shift from survival values to self-expression values is linked with increasing tolerance of diversity, an essential component of democracy.

Christians today should never claim that democracy is the Christian form of government, but we can and should claim that biblical principles fit better with democratic government than with existing alternatives. In addition, Christian virtues--honesty, tolerance, love for neighbor--strengthen democratic life. Therefore Christians should actively nurture democracy in their own countries and around the world.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Democracy is not a fragile flower still it needs cultivating.

A democracy cannot rule an empire. Neither can one man, though empire may appear to presuppose monarchy. There is always an oligarchy somewhere, open or concealed.

If democracy is to be rebuilt … it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians, but for the politicians to learn to trust the public.

As "war rules" trickle down into ordinary life, they are beginning to change everything from policing and immigration policy to courtroom evidentiary rules and governmental commitments to transparency, gradually eroding the foundations of democracy and individual rights. In

Freedom only for the members of the government, only for the members of the Party - though they are quite numerous - is no freedom at all.

It [the proletariat] should and must at once undertake socialist measures in the most energetic, unyielding and unhesitant fashion, in other words, exercise a dictatorship, but a dictatorship of the class, not of a party or of a clique – dictatorship of the class, that means in the broadest possible form on the basis of the most active, unlimited participation of the mass of the people, of unlimited democracy.

Social Democracy, does not, however, expect to attain its aim either as a result of the victorious violence of a minority or through the numerical superiority of a majority. It sees socialism come as a result of economic necessity - and the comprehension of that necessity - leading to the suppression of capitalism by the working masses. And this necessity manifests itself above all in the anarchy of capitalism.

Democracy is indispensable to the working class, because only through the exercise of its democratic rights, in the struggle for democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its class interests and its historic task.

a professor of sociology asserted that "the most dangerous weakness in a democracy is the uninformed and unthinking average man.

Ma la causa vera di tutti i nostri mali, di questa tristezza nostra, sai qual è? La democrazia, mio caro, la democrazia, cioè il governo della maggioranza. Perché, quando il potere è in mano d'uno solo, quest'uno sa d'esser uno e di dover contentare molti; ma quando i molti governano, pensano soltanto a contentar se stessi, e si ha allora la tirannia più balorda e più odiosa: la tirannia mascherata da libertà.

If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith, that freedom asks more than it gives, and that the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored.

Theater in America is a kind of weed sprouting up in the weirdest places. It's deeply democratic and deeply human, and I think it's one of the best things our culture does.

70% dos cidadãos votam do mesmo modo que respiram: sem saber porque nem o quê. Votam como vão à festa da Penha, — por divertimento. A Constituição é para eles uma coisa inteiramente desconhecida. Estão prontos para tudo: uma revolução ou um golpe de Estado.

Trump is the first anti-democratic president in modern U.S. history.

Martha C. Nussbaum's manifesto Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities