Quotes About Democracy

I'm optimistic Hong Kong will achieve universal suffrage - no matter the attitude of Beijing.

Although universal suffrage may not be a panacea for all social problems, it does have a profound bearing on the democratic development and governance of a place.

Implementing universal suffrage for the 2017 election is a big step forward along our road to democracy. This is not only a solemn commitment of the central authorities to Hong Kong but also the aspiration shared by seven million Hong Kong people.

We Chinese are instinctively democratic, and Dr. Sun's objective of universal suffrage evokes from all Chinese a ready and unhesitating response.

Universal suffrage is sound in principle. The radical element is right.

The Paris Commune was first and foremost a democracy. The government was a body elected by universal suffrage.

Among many other reforms, Australians pioneered the secret ballot and universal suffrage.

Hong Kongers deserve universal suffrage.

While, legally, universal suffrage has been achieved for all undetained citizens over the age of 18, many people still find it difficult to vote in elections.

You look at the Americans. They don't lack fervour in moral causes. They promote democracy, freedom of speech, women's rights, gay rights, sometimes even transgender rights. But you don't see them applying that universally across the world with all their allies.

This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in.

Public universities are the lifeblood of modern democracies.

Peace should be understood in a human way - in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.

Without the ability to criticize unjust laws in powerful symbolic ways, we can't change them. And the point of a democracy is that people should be able to convince other people to change a law.

It is un-American, it is unjust to target any group of folks whether they are African-American, Hispanic, poor or elderly when it comes to access to the vote.

Electoral fraud is not unknown in America.

No country is free unless it is democratic.

In our Constitution, it is said that we have freedom of speech and freedom of expression. In my mind, unless that freedom is total, it is no freedom at all.

So I think one can say on empirical grounds - not because of some philosophical principle - that you can't have democracy unless you have a market economy.

If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president.

Women fight for democracy and engage in the world. But they shouldn't try and be copying men and be masculine; they should anchor on the home and build on those fundamentals.

And we are grateful to the American young men and women who are risking their lives to give the Iraqi people this chance, this dream of democracy in Iraq now.

Courts are an aristocratic institution in a democracy. That's the dilemma for an institution that has the function of reviewing the will of the people. We're bound to be "anti-majoritarian."

Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one.