Quotes About Democracy

Anyone who values freedom and democracy should fight when they are threatened. Tyranny anywhere in the world must be snuffed out. We in the free world should have learned that in the 1930s, when bullies began to rear their heads in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Tyranny feeds upon itself and spreads like a great cancer. If we do not stop it, then who will?

But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. This is Walter Cronkite. Good night.

The power to execute invests a near absolute power in the state. As Robert Meeropol has suggested, the granting of such absolute power most surely tends to corrupt, and especially to corrupt democracy. Meeropol's own parents, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, were executed in 1953 when he was six years old.

But in a democracy the only way to meaningfully defend them—and not just make empty gestures of recognition and "celebration"—is to win elections and exercise power in the long run, at every level of government. And the only way to accomplish that is to have a message that appeals to as many people as possible and pulls them together. Identity liberalism does just the opposite.

Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longer believe in politics. It is for this reason that we find both high levels of support for democracy in cross-national opinion polls and high rates of political apathy.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor the greatest champion of racial equality who taught a nation - through compassion and courage - about democracy, nonviolence and racial justice.

America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism.

The Seventeenth Amendment serves not the public's interest but the interests of the governing masterminds and their disciples. Its early proponents advanced it not because they championed 'democracy' or the individual, but because they knew it would be one of several important mechanisms for empowering the federal government and unraveling constitutional republicanism.

single political party and ideology, they not only destroy their own purpose but threaten the existence of a free republic.

The Commission on Freedom of the Press (also known as the Hutchins Commission) was organized in 1942 by Time and Life magazine publisher Henry Luce to explore whether freedom of the press was in danger and the proper function of the media in a modern democracy.

The masterminds and their flatterers are progressively immune to regular democratic processes and pressures, such as elections and citizen lobbying, unless, of course, the electoral results and policy demands comport with their own governing objectives. Otherwise, they have an escalating preference for rule by administrative regulation, executive decree, and judicial fiat as the ends justifies the means.

Americans believe that the media have an important role to play in our democracy—yet they don't see that role being fulfilled.

Only a government that is rich and safe can afford to be a democracy, for democracy is the most expensive and nefarious kind of government ever heard of on earth

A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.

In democracy both a deep reverence and a sense of the comic are requisite.

Now, mark it. This may be strong language, but heed it. The people mean it, and, my friends of the Eastern Democracy, we bid farewell when you do that thing.

El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans... I have heard a single voice.

You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say.

Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.

The power to mould the future of the Republic will be in the hands of the journalists of future generations.

We need a very progressive and strong agenda to bring people into the political process because I worry very much about the future of the American democracy where so many people are giving up.

The future of this republic is in the hands of the American voter.

From this vision of the role of the United Nations in the next century flow three key priorities for the future: eradicating poverty, preventing conflict and promoting democracy.

Let us continue to strive together for a more inclusive, democratic, and peaceful future for us all.