Quotes About Democracy

The voice of the people is the voice of God

populismo es el uso demagógico que un líder carismático hace de la legitimidad democrática para prometer la vuelta de un orden tradicional o el acceso a una utopía posible y, logrado el triunfo, consolidar un poder personal al margen de las leyes, las instituciones y las libertades.

El populismo es el uso demagógico de la democracia para acabar con ella.

Sin democracia –argumenta, por una vez argumenta, Vasconcelos– el resultado es la dictadura militar o burocrática: el caudillismo latinoamericano o el predominio de una casta burocrática, como en Rusia.

liberty and the homeland of the Jews. Athenian democracy had shifted to Washington, and ancient Judaism had taken a secular form in the state of Israel.

And it especially cannot endure when powerful groups in that society seek at every turn to undermine and destroy its very being. The threats to democracy are not always from enemies abroad. They can come from those within who espouse the language of democracy and use the liberties afforded them by democratic institutions to undermine the substance of democracy. Weimar cautions us to be wary of those people as well. What comes next can be very bad, even worse than imaginable.

Robust social infrastructure doesn't just protect our democracy; it contributes to economic growth.

Democracy must begin at home, and its home is the neighborly community.

And that brings me to my definition of power, which is simply this: the capacity to make others do what you would have them do. It sounds menacing, doesn't it? We don't like to talk about power. We find it scary. We find it somehow evil. We feel uncomfortable naming it. In the culture and mythology of democracy, power resides with the people.

With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.

democracy without real patriotism moves toward the destruction of the ordered liberty bequeathed to us by the founders.

With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made "legal." Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.

The problems of the Ludic Century are complex system problems. Environmental collapse, social inequity, the design of democracy itself—these seemingly intractable challenges are tied to our increasingly integrated and complicated world.

Who rules here?' I asked. They said: 'The People naturally.' I said: 'Naturally the people but who really rules?

In Catholic countries we saw (and sometimes still see) a large number of illiterates side by side with an intellectual élite of high standards. The Protestant goal of education is usually one of good averages- the optimum for a democracy. In democracies there will always be resentment and contempt for the "highbrow" and the illiterate, the intellectual and the "peasant.

After a democratic interlude the "monarchy" returns with a vengeance, returns by the back door, camouflaged, masked and diabolically perverted—a blood-curdling metamorphosis we know only from nightmares or surrealist films. The reassertion of the natural father-urge does not result in the restitution of the paternal kingdom but in the rise of the Terrifying Father, a Krónos devouring his own children, who are paralyzed by his magnetic glare like rabbits facing a boa constrictor.

In America there is not one single element of civilization that is not made to depend, in the end, upon public opinion.

A man without a vote ... is like a man without a hand.

God's hand, like a sign-board, is pointing toward democracy, and saying to the nations of the earth, "This is the way: walk ye in it."

The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other man, but that every man shall have liberty to be what God made him, without hindrance.

The callers seemed to believe that voting in opposition to their personal views for political reasons was perfectly natural.

typical of a Democratic constituency: the system only works if we win.

Democracy is the best revenge. After Benazir Bhutto's death, her son's brief public remarks were captured on video, and they were reported in international newspapers. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari announced, "My mother always said, ' Democracy is the best revenge.' "

Democracy needs support and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies. Democratic nations should... come together in an association designed to help each other and promote what is a universal value democracy.