Quotes About Democracy

Effectively, there is no democracy without such an unconditional symmetry in the rights to express yourself, and the gravest threat is the slippery slope in the attempts to limit speech on grounds that some of it may hurt some people's feelings. Such restrictions do not necessarily come from the state itself, rather from the forceful establishment of an intellectual monoculture by an overactive thought police in the media and cultural life.

bottom-up political systems, and

Greenspan's actions were harmful, but even if he knew that, it would have taken a bit of heroic courage to justify inaction in a democracy where the incentive is to always promise a better outcome than the other guy, regardless of the actual, delayed cost.

Effectively, there is no democracy without such an unconditional symmetry in the rights to express yourself, and the gravest threat is the slippery slope in the attempts to limit speech on grounds that some of it may hurt some people's feelings.

Democracy is a luxury enjoyed by simple low-population societies, though wealth can maintain it for longer than its natural span. However, societies grow in population and complexity, the technological apparatus of control improves, individual freedoms impinge upon others until they demand "action" from government that is generally eager to comply and accrue more power to itself, and democracy gradually sickens and dies.

All this to drive home the simple face that human government - whether it be dictatorship, monarchy, or government of the people, by the people, for the people - had to perish from the Earth. - The Thunderhead

There is no reasonable, stable government save the aristocratic. Monarchy and republic, based on democracy, are equally weak and absurd. … There exist but three respectable beings: the priest, the warrior, the poet. To know, to kill, and to create. Other men are serfs or slaves, created for the stable, that is, to exercise what are called professions.

Il n'y a de gouvernement raisonnable et assuré que l'aristocratique. Monarchie ou république, basées sur la démocratie, sont également absurdes et faibles. ----------------- Il n'existe que trois êtres respectables: Le prêtre, le guerrier, le poète. Savoir, tuer et créer. Les autres hommes sont taillables et corvéables, faits pour l'écurie, c'est-à-dire pour exercer ce qu'on appelle des professions.

it's when you're on the row that you notice that everything is owned and that there are locks on everything this is the way a democracy works: you get what you can, try to keep that and add to it if possible

the wind blows hard tonight and it's a cold wind and I think about the boys on the row. I hope some of them have a bottle of red. it's when you're on the row that you notice that everything is owned and that there are locks on everything. this is the way a democracy works: you get what you can, try to keep that and add to it if possible. this is the way a dictatorship works too only they either enslave or destroy their derelicts. we just forgot ours. in either case it's a hard cold wind.

One of the failures of Democracy is that the common vote guarantees a common leader who then leads us to a common apathetic predictability!

America is the place where you cannot kill your Government by killing the men who conduct it. The only way you can kill government in America is by making the men and women of America forget how to govern. —Woodrow Wilson, 1919

Our new allies are weak and unreliable and mean us ill. We need a new kind of arsenal if we are to defend democracy and freedom, and the first step in rebuilding our defenses is to build a hypercomputing cloud in solar orbit, one powerful enough to summon the Lord of Sleep to lead us…

The democratic process will always favor small, well-organized groups at the expense of large, diffuse groups. It's not just how many people care one way or the other; it's how much they care. Two percent who care deeply about something

If sane, pragmatic, moderate people ignore politics because they are disgusted with the outcomes, then it merely leaves a vacuum to be filled by more extreme and dishonest elements. Unlike baseball, democracy is not a spectator sport. Things won't correct themselves if you ignore them out of disgust. They will get worse. Look around.

At first glance, the most suspicious thing about polling is that the opinions of so few can tell us about the opinions of so many.

The Igbo are a very democratic people. The Igbo people expressed a strong antimonarchy sentiment—Ezebuilo—which literally means, a king is an enemy. Their culture illustrates a clear-cut opposition to kings, because, I think, the Igbo people had seen what the uncontrolled power of kings could do.

what kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance?

one man with vision—an enlightened dictator. People are scared of the word nowadays. But what kind of democracy can exist side by side with so much corruption and ignorance?

The Igbo are a very democratic people. The Igbo people expressed a strong antimonarchy sentiment—Ezebuilo—which literally means, a king is an enemy.

Chant back to us our platitudes about democracy, greatness, and freedom. Vote in our rigged corporate elections. Send your young men and women to fight and die in useless, unwinnable wars that provide huge profits for corporations.

There was in the House only one dissenting vote, from Barbara J. Lee, a Democrat from California, who warned that military action could not guarantee the safety of the country and that 'as we act, let us not become the evil we deplore.

All of the movements that opened up the democratic space in America—the abolitionists, the suffragists, the labor movement, the communists, the socialists, the anarchists, and the civil rights movement—developed a critical mass and militancy that forced the centers of power to respond. The platitudes about justice, equality, and democracy are just that. Only when ruling elites become worried about survival do they react. Appealing to the better nature of the powerful is useless.

Money has replaced the vote.