Quotes About Democracy

Anybody who asks for democracy to be introduced should respect the results of democracy.

In addition to removing our democratically elected government, Israel wants to sow dissent among Palestinians by claiming that there is a serious leadership rivalry among us. I am compelled to dispel this notion definitively.

It is up-hill work to oppose our prejudices; we have a democracy, but freedom of speech is enjoyed only by the most foolish members of this Assembly and by the comic poets in the theatre. As, however, I am not here to court your votes, I shall say what I think...

Under that democracy, license was not confounded with freedom. Political 'equality' has been understood in two senses: as meaning either that all are to share absolutely alike, or that every man is to receive his due. Our ancestors preferred that 'equality' which does not efface the distinction between merit and worthlessness.

pensò che solo quella democrazia appena nata poteva meritare il nome di democrazia; era quello il valore che invano poco fa egli andava cercando nella modestia delle cose e non trovava; perché quell'epoca era ormai finita, e piano piano a invadere il campo era tornata l'ombra grigia dello Stato burocratico, uguale prima durante e dopo il fascismo, la vecchia separazione tra amministratori e amministrati.

Participatory democracy demands low-energy technology, and free people must travel the road to productive social relations at the speed of a bicycle.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

Welcome, my dear, to the Western world, land of democracy, freedom, and bigotry.

Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just.

China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

Politicians now think they have to educate the electorate and explain to them what is good for them. Gone are the days when the electorate educated their representatives .

Whenever American farmers leave their plows en masse and race threateningly after the regular politicians they are called wild jackasses, or worse. An agrarian tide is said to be rising, or a fire sweeping the prairies, or a farm rebellion in progress. Mixing of the burning and flowing and rebelling metaphors is hard to avoid...The hoofprints of the wild jackasses are on our democracy, and its configuration is the better for them.

Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.

The war was to make the world safe for democracy for the little countries for everybody. If the war was over now then the world must be all safe for democracy. Was it? And what kind of democracy? And how much? And whose?

You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.

Let the record reflect that the supposedly robust American Democracy was no match for the twin assault of nineteen Arabs with box cutters and an African-American man who made everyone buy health insurance.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.

A free and truly independent press - fiercely independent when necessary - is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.

We often hear about how we need to be more tolerant: to make room for people, ideas, and actions with which we may not agree. This is a prerequisite for a functional democracy. But tolerance alone is not sufficient; it allows us to accept others without engaging with them, to feel smug and self-satisfied without challenging the boundaries within which too many of us live.

No one has a monopoly on the truth, but the whole premise of our democracy is that truth and justice must win out. And the role of a trained journalist is to get as close to the truth as is humanly possible. Make no mistake: We are being tested. Without a vibrant, fearless free press, our great American experiment may fail.

To suppress the vote is to make a mockery of democracy. And those who do so are essentially acknowledging that their policies are unpopular. If you can't convince a majority of voters that your ideas are worthy, you try to limit the pool of voters.

Dissent is most controversial during wartime because it is cast as unpatriotic and dangerous to the national cause. But that is precisely the time when a democracy should be asking itself difficult and uncomfortable questions.

a democracy requires open access to ideas. It requires a willingness to struggle and learn, to question our own suppositions and biases, to open ourselves as citizens, and a nation, to a world of books and thought. If we become a country of superficiality and easy answers based on assumptions and not one steeped in reason and critical learning, we will have lost the foundation of our founding and all that has allowed our nation to grow into our modern United States.