Quotes About Democracy

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We no longer have a government of, by, and for the people—representative democracy. We have government by plutocracy—the rule of the rich for the rich by the rich," Moyers

Thomas Paine said, "The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery."1

Literary works are not democracies. We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. We may, but the country of Novels, Etc., doesn't. In that faraway place, no character is created equal. One or two of them get all the breaks; the rest exist to get them to the finish line.

A jó kapcsolatok, sok egyéb mellett Å'szinteségrÅ'l, nyíltságról, megértésrÅ'l, és demokráciáról szólnak.

Private property and capitalism also provide strong incentives to preserve resources for the future, whereas political resource allocation under democracy tends toward immediate gratification.

Majority rule is not "destroyed" by smaller political units. Quite the contrary; it is rendered more efficient in serving the taxpaying public. Majority rule voting will exist in smaller political units even more efficiently than in larger, more centralized ones. That's why Switzerland, with its highly decentralized system of government and with power vested in more than sixty cantons, is arguably the world's most peaceful and prosperous democracy.

It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.

Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends [life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness] it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government...

The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object.

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.

The only security of all is in a free press.

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union, or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated, where reason is left free to combat it. [First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801]

The government you elect is the government you deserve.

Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large...

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance

I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to.