Quotes About Democracy

The Democratic Party looks at massive immigration, legal and illegal, as a source of voters.

Tož demokracii bychom už m?li, te? ješt? n?jaké ty demokraty.

Democracy is not only a form of state, it is not just something that is embodied in a constitution; democracy is a view of life, it requires a belief in human beings, in humanity...I have already said that democracy is a discussion. But the real discussion is possible only if people trust each other and if they try to fairly find the truth.

Let me remind you what fascism is. It need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt. It may even wear a dress shirt. Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.

Perhaps I could put this to you too: that it is not only the decision that matters, I mean democracy is about how you do things, not just what the outcome is.

In a world where authoritarianism of the left or right is a very real possibility, the question of whether ordinary people can govern themselves by consent is still on trial--as it always has been, and always will be. Beyond parliamentary democracy as we know it, we shall have to find a new popular democracy to replace it.

I have five questions that I ask people who have power, and I recommend them to the House. If I see someone who is powerful, be it a traffic warden, Rupert Murdoch, the head of a trade union or a Member of Parliament, I ask myself these five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? How can we get rid of you?" That last question is crucial.

In our democracy no man should tell another man to break the law, nor should any man break the law to by-pass Parliament. But a person who is punished for breaking an unjust law may if he is sincere and his cause wins public sympathy, create a public demand to have that unjust law changed through Parliament. This is the first and most fundamental principle of British democracy. It has a deep moral significance. Our religious and political liberties rest upon it.

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world.

In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person--Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates--ask them five questions: "What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?" If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny democracy, not dictatorship the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.

But the disposition to disagree, to reject and to dissent - however irritating it may be when taken to extremes - is the very lifeblood of an open society. We need people who make a virtue of opposing mainstream opinion. A democracy of permanent consensus will not long remain a democracy.

If it is to be taken seriously again, the Left must find its voice. There is much to be angry about: growing inequalities of wealth and opportunity; injustices of class and caste; economic exploitation at home and abroad; corruption and money and privilege occluding the arteries of democracy.

Our curious Western relationship with the country reinforces their strange status. We beg them to buy yet another squadron of supersonic interceptors to go with their latest platoon of tanks, plead with them to keep the price of oil low, and praise them as reliable partners in the Middle East while turning a very blind eye to their extreme distaste for democracy, not to mention the fact that they supplied nearly all the 9/11 terrorists and continue to promote dissent in the Islamic world.

In rich democracies, the same factors that confer household bargaining power on women also have a positive effect on fertility. We interpret this to mean that women would like to "have it all" as long as having children does not block their possibilities of accumulating human capital in the labor market. Trying to boost fertility with a campaign of pro-family rhetoric and incentives is likely to have precisely the opposite effect as intended.

Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad.

A vibrant, self-sustaining bourgeoisie is the backbone of most successful nations, but it is essential to a democracy.

Free speech is the main right that you have. Without it, you have no others.

The Bush Doctrine is democratic imperialism. This will bleed, bankrupt and isolate this republic. This overthrows the wisdom of the Founding Fathers about what America should be all about.

I think a society in which people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most influential people.

In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.

Trachtenberg once said to me," recalled Dodd in her memoir, "that when communism came to America it would come under the label of 'progressive democracy.' 'It will come,' he added, 'in labels acceptable to the American people.

In both countries the ruling parties—Law and Justice in Poland, Fidesz in Hungary—have established regimes that maintain the forms of popular elections, but have destroyed the independence of the judiciary, suppressed freedom of the press, institutionalized large-scale corruption, and effectively delegitimized dissent. The result seems likely to be one-party rule for the foreseeable future.

JP Morgan spelled it out: for neoliberalism to survive, democracy must fade.