Quotes About Democracy

People know something has gone terribly wrong with our government and it has gotten so far off track. But people also know that there is nothing wrong in America that a good old-fashioned election can't fix.

Like Lincoln, I would like to believe the ballot is stronger than the bullet. Then again, he said that before he got shot.

As long as people think poverty is the problem," Ganz explained, "they're missing the whole point. Poverty is evidence of a problem; it's not the source of the problem. They're all based on the weakening of collective institutions—the decline of labor, of common interests. The core question is not about poverty, it's really about democracy. The galloping poverty in the United States is evidence of a retreat from democratic beliefs and practices.

Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.

Organized business has assumed that greater profits would be pretty much of a cure-all, and it has to a major extent ignored the fact that the welfare of business rests upon the welfare of the consumers of a nation; that business or free enterprise will function in a democracy only so long as the democracy functions.

It is impossible to understand regime fall and survival in Latin America without examining changing normative views about democracy and dictatorship.

Widespread public access to knowledge, like public education, is one of the pillars of our democracy, a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.

All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed. That is a milestone we left a long time ago.

Our constitutional democracy demands our participation, all the time.

We are sitting on a cornucopia of knowing that we had no way to access as a democracy. We couldn't get the democratization of the human capacity before our time.

I ... ran for Legislature [in 1832] ... and was beaten-the only time I have been beaten by the people.

If voting wasn't important, why would they be spending so much time and so much energy trying to stop you from doing it?

I think it's time for the Army to understand that power should be enshrined in the people if we are to be a genuine democracy and not in any particular institution or organisation.

You now have the potential of 200 people deciding who ends up being elected president every single time.

In the midterm elections, a 102-year-old woman voted for the first time in a U.S. election. Unfortunately, she voted for Woodrow Wilson.

Although Christianity has never been the guarantee of a democratic state anywhere in the world, no democracy has ever thrived successfully for any period of time outside of Christian influence.

It is past time for the U.S. government to fully fulfill our moral obligation to those who have fought for freedom and democracy.

The last time I checked, the Constitution said, 'of the people, by the people and for the people.' That's what the Declaration of Independence says.

People have been unhappy for a long time about the two-party system.

In a time of polarized politics there's one thing that more than ninety percent of Americans agree on, that our government is broken, and broken because of the money in politics.

It takes a long time to build democracy, to build freedom.

I don't believe that government is good at picking technology, particularly technology that is changing. By the time you get it done and go through democracy, it's so outdated.

And the first thing we have to do is vote. Hey, no, not just once in a while. Not just when my husband or somebody you like is on the ballot. But in every election at every level, all of the time.

I think the important thing is to realize that the establishment of a democracy is sometimes a messy thing and it takes time. Yeah, we've been at it 240 years.