Quotes About Democracy

Para mantenerse libres hay que tener los ojos siempre abiertos puestos sobre el gobierno. Hay que espiar sus pasos, oponerse a sus atentados, reprimir sus desvíos… [el objetivo] es ejercer un control perpetuo sobre los hombres que llegan al poder. Aunque vosotros los hayáis elegido, controlarlos es un deber de todos en todo momento.

Es también evidente afirmar que, si las condiciones político-sociales son autoritarias o, cuando menos no ciertamente democráticas, las decisiones judiciales padecerán y con ellas, muy probablemente, quienes las emiten.

men of genius stand apart and are laws unto themselves; showed him, too, that all qualities—singularity of appearance, wit, rudeness even, count doubly in a democracy.

The Internet is clearly about more than sports scores and email now. It's a place where we can conduct our democracy and get very large amounts of data to very large numbers of people.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.

Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

The very soundness of our democratic institutions depends on the determination of our government to give employment to idle men.

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

Presidents are selected, not elected.

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.... Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing.

I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them." [ Letter to Herbert Putnam ; in: Waters, Edward N.: Herbert Putnam: the tallest little man in the world ; Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 33:2 (April 1976), p. 171]

Hoy en día, por un increíble juego de manos, la mayoría de los humanos se llena la panza con la carne muerta de animales de cuya forma de morir no saben nada. El matadero es una de las últimas tierras ignotas de nuestras democracias. Y también, como vamos a ver, un territorio sin ley: se permiten en él todas las bajezas.

Today, rather than a democracy we have a plutocracy (rule by moneyed interests) in which some of the formal elements of democracy nonetheless remain. Needless to say a real democracy ... is impossible where income, wealth, and power are concentrated and where inequality is growing, that is, in the normal ways of things under capitalism

in a democracy, ordinary citizens should be wary of political leaders who provide simplistic answers to complex social, political, and economic problems.

One of the aspects of the genius of Franklin Delano Roosevelt was that, although a convinced Democrat, he was quite prepared to use talent wherever he found it.

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Non c'è dittatura senza fedeltà, la fedeltà è la solida roccia sulla quale si erige lo Stato totalitario, che senza di essa affonderebbe nella sabbia; per la democrazia è necessaria invece una certa mancanza di fedeltà, una attitudine più svolazzante, più irresoluta, più fantasiosa.

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another--no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy.