Quotes About Democracy

We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.

Foreign influence in domestic politics could be deadly to any democracy.

The backstory of the back-and-forth during composition [...] makes it clear that Washington's insistence on elevating public education was based on a deep and urgent insight: that democracies' success depended on an educated and enlightened population.

Ultimately, the overarching prescription from President Eisenhower was similar to what Washington had counseled as the ultimate check and balance: vigorous citizenship. In a democracy, political father figures are never the last sources of responsibility. 'Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,' Ike advised, 'can compel the proper meshing of the huge industry and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Eisenhower also sounded the clarion call for generational responsibility: 'As we peer into society's future, we--you and I, and our government--must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come.

While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.

opponent, a decent moderate Republican, failed to even get one vote in hundreds of precincts, with the President gaining over 99% of the votes cast in thousands of other precincts

The best guarantee against the abuse of power consists in the freedom, the purity, and the frequency of popular elections.

The will of the people is the source and the happiness of the people the end of all legitimate government upon earth.

In general, democracy and individualism have advanced in spite of and often against specific economic interest. Both democracy and individualism have been based upon financial sacrifice, not gain. Even in Athens, a large part of the 7,000 citizens who participated regularly in assemblies were farmers who had to give up several days' work to go into town to talk and listen.

Property-owning democracy avoids [inequalities], not by redistributing income to those with less at the end of each period, so to speak, but rather by ensuring the widespread ownership of productive assets and human capital (educated abilities and trained skills) at the beginning of each period.

Sri Lanka's problems were caused by too much democracy.

The history of post-independence Sri Lanka, from a Sri Lankan Tamil perspective, is a history of lost privileges, intensifying discrimination, failure of democratic institutions to protect their rights and finally,coercion by an overwhelmingly Sinhalese security establishment.

Sri Lanka's problems were caused by declining even-handedness and transparency of its democratic processes and institutions.

Individual liberty is the whole purpose of political life, and I thought it was threatened then [in 1964 becoming politically engaged at age 15] and I think it's threatened now.

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.

The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.

Bas?n özgürlüÄŸü"nün, ahlaksal olarak çökmüÅŸ ya da bask?c? bir yönetime kar?? bir güvence olarak savunulmas?n? gerektirecek günlerin geride kald???n? umuyoruz.

Ç?karlar konusunda halk?yla uyuÅŸmam?? bir yasama ya da yürütme organ?n?n, o halk?n neler düÅŸünmesi gerektiÄŸini, hangi öÄŸretileri ya da savunular? duymas?na izin verilebileceÄŸini belirlemesine f?rsat tan?mamak konusunda art?k herhangi bir savunuya gerek kalmam??t?r herhalde.

The "people" who exercise the power, are not always the same people with those over whom it is exercised; and the "self-government" spoken of, is not the government of each by himself, but of each by all the rest.

this benefit from the Montesquieu of our own times, M. de Tocqueville.

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution empowers Congress and makes the United States a democracy by guaranteeing that the people's representatives will know what governmental agencies are

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elected, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."1 —JAMES MADISON