Quotes About Democracy

Citizenship of a democratic state means living by the laws of the country. A liberal democracy cannot survive when part of the population believes that divine laws trump those made by man.

I have said we are prepared to bring black people into our government ... But I don't believe in majority rule, black majority rule, not in a thousand years. If it is white one day and black the other, then we have failed.

In politics democracy itself is at stake in this world of high-speed always-on news. Political reporters pronounce sudden verdicts upon the politicians they often outshine in fame and as a result parliaments everywhere feel themselves reduced to side-attractions in the great non-stop media show.

In modern democracies, press freedom was being used as a cloak to shield media conglomerates' domination of public discussion 'in which misinformation may be peddled uncorrected and in which reputations may be selectively shredded or magnified. A free press is not an unconditional good.' When the media mislead, she added, 'the wells of public discourse and public life are poisoned'. Dr Onora O'Neill

The anxiety to destroy democracy rather than the keenness to bring the Nazis to power was what triggered the complex developments that led to Hitler's Chancellorship.

The great lie of democracy, its essential paradox, is that democracy is first to be sacrificed when its security is at risk. Every state is totalitarian at heart; there are no ends to the cruelty it will go to to protect itself.

Democrats hold that governments are legitimate when those who are affected by decisions play an appropriate role in making them and when there are meaningful opportunities to oppose the government of the day, replacing it with an alternative.

The democratic tradition offers better resources than the going alternatives for ensuring that political claims and counter-claims are tested for their veracity in the public arena, and for protecting those individual rights that best embody the aspiration for human freedom.

Their style of government is called Democracy. The purpose of which is that the meat is claimed by a few men and the bones are tossed over to the people. They resolve all their issues with power but call it mutual cooperation. Their rulers call themselves Peoples' representatives. People do elect them for governance but it is the power of their wealth that gets them to the seat of government.

Informed by our sad experience of history, we require nothing short of a foundation for lasting democracy.

The challenge as we saw in the Nigerian project was to restructure the economy decisively in the direction of a modern free market as an appropriate environment for cultivation of freedom and democracy and the natural emergence of a new social order.

To meet the expectations of the majority of our people, and to open up new vistas of economic opportunity so that the aspirations of Nigerians can stand a fair chance of being fulfilled in a lifetime, there must be a truly committed leadership in a democratic Nigeria.

La sociedad civil solidaria y organizada que tanto se jactó de su emergencia con los sismos es la misma que luego bajó las manos ante el fraude electoral de 1988, la misma que creyó y avaló la construcción de la efímera quimera salinista, la misma que en nuestros días ejerce sus labores democráticos como si se tratara de imperativos neuróticos. ¿Negamos los sismos porque los vinculamos con esta penosa actualidad social y política?

We got rid of a terrible dictator. We gave the Iraqi people an opportunity for a new life under a representative form of government.

But the wonderful thing about our democratic system is that anyone can jump in regardless of qualifications and present himself or herself to the American people, whether you are a former general, a former politician, a fool, or whatever. Quoted in The NPR Interviews 1996, edited by Robert Siegal

La dictature c'est "Ferme ta gueule !", la démocratie c'est "Cause toujours !

The paradox of democracy is that its stability is born of its openness to upheaval through elections, legislation, and social action. Disruption is built into the fabric of democracy.

For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.

the Founders were concerned that the will of the people could easily become the preferences of the mob.

Freedom of expression - in particular, freedom of the press - guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

When the conservative looks upon a democratic movement from below, this (and the exercise of agency) is what he sees: a terrible disturbance in the private life of power.

A black agenda is jobs, jobs, jobs, quality education, investment in infrastructure and strong democratic regulation of corporations. The black agenda, at its best, looks at America from the vantage point of the least of these and asks what's best for all.

Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)