Quotes About Democracy

All democracies demand common public education because nothing makes people so much alike as the same education.

Class struggle: external peace, international solidarity, peace among peoples. This is the sacred slogan of international socialist democracy that liberates nations.

By all accounts the Angolan people, the great majority of them poor, illiterate and living in isolated villages or urban slums, carry out their civic responsibilities with great dignity and patience. The two voting days in Angola are another confirmation that anyone who mouths the cliché that Africans are not ready for democracy is simply ignorant of the facts. African politicians, however, are a different matter.

The years of speeches about democracy and freedom were just words directed at an audience of mainly conservative Americans who had become enamoured with Africa's best known 'freedom fighter'. His commitment to democratic principles was no more real than the Maoist rhetoric Savimbi spouted in the pre-independence days when China was his biggest backer. It all comes down to this: 'If I don't win, I won't accept the result.

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class are to represent and repress them.

The Open Society and Its Enemies

The most we can say of democracy or freedom is that they give our personal abilities a little more influence on our well-being.

It is not difficult to show that a theory of democratic control can be developed which is free of the paradox of sovereignty. The theory I have in mind is one which does not proceed, as it were, from a doctrine of the intrinsic goodness or righteousness of a majority rule, but rather from the baseness of tyranny; or more precisely, it rests upon the decision, or upon the adoption of the proposal, to avoid and to resist tyranny." Karl Popper, 'The Open Society and Its Enemies', Chapter 7.

It will for ever remain one of the greatest triumphs of Athenian democracy that it treated slaves humanely, and that in spite of the inhuman propaganda of philosophers like Plato himself and Aristotle it came, as he witnesses, very close to abolishing slavery.

Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things — and above all on ourselves.

Demokrasi ve despotizm aras?ndaki fark: demokrasilerde kan dökmeden hükümetler devrilir; oysa despotizmde bu böyle de?ildir. 3. Demokrasi, vatanda?lara iyilikler sunamaz (ve sunmamal? da). Gerçekten de "demokrasi" tek ba??na bir ?ey yapamaz; bir ?eyler yapacak olan ancak demokratik bir devletin vatanda?lar?d?r (ve ku?kusuz hükümetleridir).

Demek ki Platon'un, "Kim yönetmeli?" ya da "Kim iktidar sahibi olmal??" sorusu yanl??t?r. demokrasiye inanmamam?z?n nedeni, demokraside halk?n egemen olmas?ndan kaynaklanm?yor. Ne siz ne de ben hakimiz; tam tersine sizler de, ben de yönetiliyoruz, hatta bazen ho?umuza gitmeyecek kadar çok. demokrasi bizim için, siyasi muhalefet ve bu nedenle de siyasi özgürlük anlay???yla uzla?abilen tek yönetim biçimidir.

Fakat ayd?nlar?m?z ve yar?-ayd?nlar?m?z, "Nas?l olur da benim verdi?im oy, s?radan bir çöpçünün verdi?i oyla ayn? tutulur?", "Cahil kitleye göre ileriyi daha iyi gören ve bu nedenle büyük siyasi kararlarda daha etkin olabilecek hiç mi seçkin beyin yoktur?" biçimindeki sorular?yla kar??m?za ç?karlar.

Ben bir ölçek önermi?tim: Ço?unluk bir hükümet de?i?ikli?ini arzu etti?i takdirde, devletin politik kurumlar? vatanda?lar?na, kan dökmeksizin hükümet de?i?ikli?ini gerçekle?tirmeyi mümkün k?l?yorsa, o devlet politik olarak özgürdür. Daha k?sa bir ifadeyle: yöneticilerimizden kan dökmeden kurtulabiliyorsak özgürüz demektir. (Hayat Problem Çözmektir)

In democracies,5 for example, females have often held no office or do so (as now) in such minuscule numbers as to be below even token representation. Aristocracy,

Democracy, too, is jeopardised by inequality when it concentrates power in the hands of the few and unleashes a market in political influence. That is probably nowhere more evident than in the United States, which by 2015 was home to more than 500 billionaires. 'We are now seeing billionaires becoming much more active in trying to influence the election process,' observes political analyst Darrell

You politicians remain professional because the voters remain amateur.

I was elected to the Diet in the same way as at every parliamentary election.

There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob.

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we're being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We've been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn't. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It's the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.

The department stores also imposed a new, very American kind of democracy, in which everyone was equal as long as they had the money to pay. (Marshall Field instructed his clerks to call all customers "ladies," no matter what their dress or manners.) Even poor women enjoyed the stores' big, carefully decorated windows, with displays that changed regularly.

Democracy might be defined in different ways relating to contexts and interests; however everyone must accept that the universal beauty of democracy is the right to questioning and reasoning, inquiry for truth and justice.