Quotes About Democracy

If we have a chance of succeeding and bringing stability and democracy to Iraq, it will mean learning from our mistakes, not denying them and not ignoring them.

Look at how beautiful history is when liberty succeeds through the will of the people!

For us to become a nation, everyone - including Arabs, Druze, ultra-Orthodox and new immigrants - must feel that they belong. Their success is extremely important to us. If they succeed, they will come to understand the advantages of democracy and freedom.

In China, you just don't have the space for civil society and independent discourse and free media that you do in India. That's why India's success is so important as the world's largest democracy.

Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words, the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership, Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.

Succession moments are always dangerous for democracies.

I sow; my successor reaps. This is the majesty of democracy.

I want to see my kids grow up in a world that I grew up in, which was it had imagination and it had hope. And all of a sudden, I see that being dissolved, and I see, as a country, as a people, we are a republic. We are a democracy.

Modern Americans suffer from a fear of judging. Passing judgment on the behavior of fellow human beings is considered an act of medieval, undemocratic intolerance.

I might be popular, but that is not sufficient in a parliamentary democracy set-up. One has to assess every chief minister, his success and rating in terms of how far he has succeeded in developing his colleagues.

What George W. Bush learned in his pre-presidential years - and what he omits in his new memoirs - was not how to lead a nation, but how, with sufficient toughness, to cheat the democratic system to get elected.

My view is instead of political discussions, persuasions, which dominate democracy, in our country we have taken our democracy to the other extreme. There is no debate, sufficient debate. There is court debate.

Among the responsibilities of each citizen in a participatory democracy is keeping ourselves sufficiently informed so that we can participate effectively, argue our positions honorably, and hopefully, forge sufficient consensus to understand each other and then to govern.

Many people suggest using mathematics to talk to the aliens, and Dutch computer scientist Alexander Ollongren has developed an entire language (Lincos) based on this idea. But my personal opinion is that mathematics may be a hard way to describe ideas like love or democracy.

Western-style multi-party democracy is possible but not suitable for Africa.

Which, autocracy or democracy, is really better suited to modern China? If we base our judgment upon the intelligence and the ability of the Chinese people, we come to the conclusion that the sovereignty of the people would be far more suitable for us.

I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true.

Democracy is a daring concept - a hope that we'll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

I lived in Burma for a couple of summers in the '90s, working with the democratic resistance that had fled to the jungles.

And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

Sunlight is better than secrecy when it comes to making laws.

It shone on everyone, whether they had a contract or not. The most democratic thing I'd ever seen, that California sunshine.

I would do away with super PACs. I think it's a cancer.