Quotes About Democracy

This is why the collapse of the relationship between experts and citizens is a dysfunction of democracy itself. The abysmal literacy, both political and general, of the American public is the foundation for all of these problems. It is the soil in which all of the other dysfunctions have taken root and prospered, with the 2016 election only its most recent expression.

Yes, it is unbridled ego for experts to believe they can run a democracy while ignoring its voters; it is also, however, ignorant narcissism for laypeople to believe that they can maintain a large and advanced nation without listening to the voices of those more educated and experienced than themselves.

It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.

It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism.

let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America THE LAW IS KING. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other. But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony, be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

it is repugnant to the principles of representative government that a body should give power to itself.

The House of Commons did not originate as a matter of right in the people to delegate or elect, but as a grant or boon.

The government of a free country, properly speaking, is not in the persons, but in the laws.

as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law OUGHT to be King; and there ought to be no other. But

It is impossible to find any equivalent counterpoise for the right of suffrage, because it is alone worthy to be its own basis, and cannot thrive as a graft, or an appendage. -Agrarian Justice

Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.

A Greek invention, democracy is highly overrated. For starters, it never worked in Greece. The first philosophers were fascists and, even today, 2,500 years later, the 'cradle of Western civilization' remains an incompetent state. Roman emperors and a vengeful, authoritarian God are the true European success stories.

Stanis?aw Krzy?anowski believed in democracy, equal rights for everyone, fair access to health care, an eight-hour workday, and an end to the crippling tradition of child labor.

We could say we want the Web to reflect a vision of the world where everything is done democratically. To do that, we get computers to talk with each other in such a way as to promote that ideal.

There is no reason why I should call myself a democrat.

There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy.

Musharraf has just gone against the constitution and displayed contempt of court and has shown that he has no respect for the rule of law.

I am very happy to be nominated by the Congress party to contest the Lok Sabha elections.

Although we can talk about an Indonesian democracy, or we can talk about democratic elections and democratic rituals - the trappings of democracy - we can't genuinely talk about democracy in Indonesia because there is not rule of law, and democracy without rule of law is a nonsense.

Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule.

There is clearly a conflict within British Islam between a moderate majority that accepts the norms of Western democracy and a growing minority that does not.

The domestic policy of any president, U.S. or otherwise, is his or her own concern, as long as democratic norms are followed.

We're not perfect, but we do have democracy.

I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.