Quotes About Democracy

This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.

Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise.

The problem with political jokes is they get elected.

Most surely all guys aren't same, and any democratic concept which strives to make men equal is handiest an attempt to block development

Perhaps no word is more overworked nowadays than the word "democracy," and those who shout loudest about it, I think, as a rule, want it least. I am always suspicious of men who speak glibly of democracy.

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.

Germany achieved unification as an affirmation of liberal democracy; it reaffirmed its commitment to European unity as a project of common values and shared development.

É que a visão americana assentava não na adoção do sistema europeu de equilíbrio de poder, mas na expansão dos princípios democráticos, de que resultaria o triunfo da paz.

The issues are too important to be left for the voters.

Voting is simply a way of determining which side is the stronger without putting it to the test of fighting

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted.

The century which we are entering can be and must be the century of the common man.

Free speech is to a great people what winds are to oceans and malarial regions, which waft away the germs of disease, and bring new elements of health.

There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.

quality demands a democracy of producers and consumers, freedom of criticism and initiative – conditions incompatible with a totalitarian regime of fear, lies and flattery.

and new forms of consciousness for its classes. Just as France stepped over the Reformation, so Russia stepped over the formal democracy. The Russian revolutionary party, which was to place its stamp upon a whole epoch, sought an expression for the tasks of the revolution neither in the Bible nor in that secularised Christianity called "pure" democracy, but in the material relations of the social classes.

The rule of the toilers has for the first time been realised in the soviet system, which, whatever its immediate historic vicis-situdes, has penetrated as irrevocably into the consciousness of the masses as did in its day the system of the Reformation or of pure democracy.

Our nation was founded on the principals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Under our form of government we count, we do not weigh, opinion. The fact, therefore, that a certain sound principle may long be recognized as such by an economic-informed few is of little consequence. If the majority is wrong in its thinking, then the direction of the whole is more than likely to be equally wrong.

The people were cuckolds then and they still are. The only difference is that fascism hung only one flag on the people's horns and democracy lets everyone hang one on his own horns and choose his own colour.... But we, my dear boy, walk on the horns of others; like dancers

But the proto-democracy he had envisaged would devolve into a succession of ruling dynasties. Class distinctions grew, and with them—as had happened before in both Judaism and Christianity—a rapidly rising all-male clerical elite. These men became the gatekeepers of faith, elaborating the principles of islam into the institution of Islam, often by projecting their own conservatism onto the Quran itself.

We, the most powerful democracy in the world, have developed a strong norm against talking about politics. It's fine to talk about politics with people you agree with. But it is rude to argue about politics with people you disagree with. Political discourse becomes isolated, and isolated discourse becomes more extreme. We say what our friends want to hear, and hear very little beyond what our friends say.

As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.

The more important point, however, is not about what the money does. It's about what has to be done to get the money. The effect of the money might be (democratically) benign. But what is done to secure that money is not necessarily benign. To miss this point is to betray the Robin Hood fallacy: the fact that the loot was distributed justly doesn't excuse the means taken to secure it.