Quotes About Democracy

Politics under democracy consists almost wholly of the discovery, chase and scotching of bugaboos.The statesman becomes, in the last analysis, a mere witch-hunter, a glorified smeller and snooper, eternally chanting 'Fe, Fi, Fo, Fum!

Democracy is just a false idol — a mere catchword and illusion of inferior classes, visionaries and dying civilizations.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people, no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense. No individual wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.

People say, 'If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better.' I say the Congress is too damn representative. It's just as stupid as the people are, just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish.

Liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.

It was not, however, to these Fascist groups, numerically unimportant as they were, that the Third Republic owed its collapse. On the contrary, the plain, if paradoxical, truth is that their influence was never so slight as at the moment when the collapse actually took place. What made France fall was the fact that she had no more true Dreyfusards, no one who believed that democracy and freedom, equality and justice could any longer be defended or realized under the republic.

We have become so used to thinking of domestic politics in terms of party politics that we are inclined to forget that the conflict between [the party system and the council system] has always been a conflict between parliament, the source and seat of power of the party system, and the people, who have surrendered their power to their representatives.

While the people in all great revolutions fight for true representation, the mob always will shout for for the 'strong man', the 'great leader'.

Le système de gouvernement représentatif connaît aujourd'hui une crise en partie parce qu'il a perdu, avec le temps, toutes les institutions qui pouvaient permettre une participation effective des citoyens et, d'autre part, parce qu'il est gravement atteint par le mal qui affecte le système des partis: la bureaucratisation et la tendance des deux partis à ne représenter que leurs appareils.

democratic government had rested as much on the silent approbation and tolerance of the indifferent and inarticulate sections of the people as on the articulate and visible institutions and organizations of the country.

Representative government itself is in a crisis today, partly because it has lost, in the course of time, all institutions that permitted the citizens' actual participation, and partly because it is now gravely affected by the disease from which the party system suffers: bureaucratization and the two parties' tendency to represent nobody except the party machines.

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

Congress needs to toughen the laws protecting elections and make clear that anyone interfering with democracy will pay a stiff price.

In a democracy, you have to find a market niche, make sure a novel is 'interesting' and 'spectacular.' That may be the toughest censorship of all.

Without the confidence to know our democracy is functioning properly, we risk more disillusionment, more cynicism, and even more public apathy toward the entire system.

Throughout American history many of our social gains and much of our progress toward democracy were made possible by the active intervention of the federal government.

We begin the path toward defeating Mexico's real adversary, who represents authoritarianism and the worst antidemocratic practice, who represents a return to corruption as a system and impunity as conviction. That adversary is Pena Nieto and his party.

Chile has done a lot to rid itself of poverty, especially extreme poverty, since the return to democracy. But we still have a ways to go toward greater equity. This country does not have a neoliberal economic model anymore. We have put in place a lot of policies that will ensure that economic growth goes hand in hand with social justice.

Democracy is not merely a form of government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellow men.

But at the same time, I think we recognize we can't impose democracy from without, particularly American-style democracy. We need to work with those elements in the region that are moving towards a reformed process and there are a number of them.

I find it obvious that, in a first-past-the-post electoral system, we need to head towards the centre.

But if we had to trade with a Europe dominated by the present German trade policies, we might have to change our methods to some totalitarian form. This is a prospect that any lover of democracy must view with consternation.

I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy, in democratic trade unionism.

The E.U. is more than just a trade organization or a common market; it is a guarantee of democracy, freedom, justice, and human rights. Nations cannot stay in the E.U. if they do not respect these guarantees.