Quotes About Democracy

Short of a space-alien invasion or an Oklahoma tornado, there is almost no problem that a democracy can tackle in a year. But that isn't why we have a government. We have a government to solve the problems that greedy, short-sighted businessmen like me can't.

People in Scotland want the parliament but don't give a toss about the elections.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

Nobody should have the right to eavesdrop, or you become a totalitarian state - the kind of state I escaped as a kid to come to this country where you have democracy and freedom of speech.

When Estonia reestablished its sovereignty after a half century of successive thuggish, totalitarian, foreign occupations by the Soviets, the Nazis, and then again the Soviets, we knew we wanted to create a democratic country characterized by rule of law and respect for human rights.

Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.

Large swathes of people losing faith in democracy is a dangerous thing. Conflict, desperation, totalitarianism are the products of that loss of faith.

Liberalism will beat totalitarianism by killing it softly, not by mimicking it.

China is not going to become a liberal democracy; if it did, it would collapse. I do not believe you can impose on other countries standards which are alien and totally disconnected with their past.

There's something fundamentally wrong with a system where there's been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.

Obama's rhetorical overtures to democracy, it turned out, were just a decoy to conceal his unwavering determination to govern from the far left.

government is but an instrument of the people, its powers forever subordinate to their rights as human beings.

t's hard to believe that in the greatest democracy in the world, we need legislation to prevent the government from writing and paying for the news.

We're busy exporting Democracy abroad to Afghanistan and Iraq, which is fine, but what we really need to do is a better job at making our Democracy work right here at home.

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.

Secondo alcuni ci si trova di fronte a un "dilemma democratico" che si può enunciare in questo modo: più una entità/unità politica è piccola e dunque direttamente controllabile dai suoi cittadini, più sono ridotti i suoi ambiti di sovranità. [...] D'altra parte, più l'entità territoriale è estesa più si indeboliscono le opportunità di partecipazione dei cittadini.

Google is all about getting the right information to people quickly, easily, cheaply -- and for free. We serve the world -- all countries, at least 100 different languages. It's a powerful service that most people probably couldn't have dreamed of 20 years ago. It's available to the rich, the poor, street children in Cambodia, stock traders on Wall Street -- basically everybody. It's very democratic.

A vote is a commitment, a mandate a trust.

The moral justification of a democratic mandate rest on the fulfillment of its promises and essence.

The will of the people is the wheel of a nation.

Right now I'm thinking a good deal about emancipation. One of our sins was slavery, another was emancipation. It's a paradox. In theory, emancipation was one of the glories of our democracy - and it was. But the way it was done led to tragedy, turning four million people loose with no jobs or trades or learning. And then in 1877 for a few electoral votes, just abandoning them entirely. A huge amount of pain and trouble resulted. Everybody in America is still paying for it.

The American democracy simply could not move forward after the civil rights era without adding to its great democratic principles an explicit social morality based on the insight that racism is immoral.

Athens showed and the United States of the twenty-first century confirmed, imperialism undercuts democracy by furthering inequalities among its citizens.

One of the striking effects of imperialism upon Athenian democracy was a hardening and increasing ruthlessness of the citizens.