Quotes About Democracy

Government, even in a democracy, can be captured by a small, well-organized class that has little interest in seeing broad-based access to finance.

Indeed, as we will see in the book, healthy communities are essential for sustaining vibrant market democracies. This is perhaps why authoritarian movements like fascism and communism try to replace community consciousness with nationalist or proletarian consciousness.

Finally, the people in industrial democracies, engaged in their communities and thereby organized socially and politically, enforce the necessary separation between markets and the state through their democratic voice. They do so because they want sufficient political and economic competition that the economy does not descend into authoritarianism or cronyism.

A modern, sophisticated financial sector...seeks ways to exploit government decency, whether it is the government's concern about inequality, unemployment, or the stability of the country's banks. The problem stems from the fundamental incompatibility between the goals of capitalism and those of democracy. And yet the two go together, because each of these systems softens the deficiencies of the other.

Every Indian election in the eighty-two years since the pact— whether nationwide or in a state, town or village—has been conducted on the basis of that pact, with reserved seats for Dalits but without a separate electorate.

a minority community would have 'weightage', i.e. a representation larger than what the population ratio warranted

In all countries, there are people, in numbers large or small, who are moved by the vision of a new social order in which democracy, egalitarianism and cooperation - the essential values of socialism - would be the prevailing principle of social organization. It is in the growth in their numbers and in the success of their struggles that lies the best hope for humankind.

The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

Those who stay away from the election think that one vote will do no good: 'Tis but one step more to think one vote will do no harm.

Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy.

We claim reserved seats if accompanied by adult suffrage,' stated Ambedkar, 'but in the absence of adult suffrage we want separate electorates.

an anonymous democrat was able to place an ad in the Times of India announcing the 'death of D. E. M. O'Cracy, mourned by his wife T. Ruth, his son L. I. Bertie, and his daughters Faith, Hope, and Justice'.

In March 1950 Sukumar Sen was appointed chief election commissioner.

The world over, the rhetoric of modern democratic politics has been marked by two rather opposed rhetorical styles. The first appeals to hope, to popular aspirations for economic prosperity and social peace. The second appeals to fear, to sectional worries about being worsted or swamped by one's historic enemies.

The All-India Congress Committee had once elected representatives from the states, these in turn sent up by Congress bodies at the taluk and district levels. More significantly, the chief ministers of Congress-ruled states were chosen by the local legislators alone. However, after the Congress split in 1969, Mrs Gandhi was able to place her own candidates in key positions.

The history of the twentieth century, he pointed out, is replete with instances of the tragedy that overtakes democracy when a leader who has risen to power on the crest of a popular wave or with the support of a democratic organisation becomes a victim of political narcissism and is egged on by a coterie of unscrupulous sycophants who use corruption and terror to silence opposition and attempt to make public opinion an echo of authority.

What is a democratic Central Government to do with a Communist state?' he asked. 'What would the American administration do if California or Wisconsin suddenly – and I admit, somewhat unexpectedly – turned Communist? And again, how is a Communist government itself to behave with democratic overlords sitting on its neck?

remarkable achievement', then went on to say that 'both Union and democracy are under increasing strain these days, with the future of both in doubt'.66 However, most Indians were by now comfortable with the diversity within. They could see what bound the varied religions, races and regions:

They'd done their best with democracy, with capitalism, but those had reached their limit long ago. They'd been corrupted, twisted to the interests of a few individuals, when the greatest problems the world faced were problems of collective interest.

Power is best when it's distributed most broadly. That's what democracy means. That's what freedom means. The right to determine your individual destiny belongs in your hands, and no one else's.

A stable democracy needs a strong government but no less importantly also a strong opposition. Without the latter, the road to corruption is wide open.

Liberty is always destroyed by the multitude, in the name of liberty.

Must the howling Demos devour everything gentle in the land, and reduce us all to the common level of the pot-house politician, and compel us to use his slang? Radicalism seemed to be now, just what it had been in the great French Revolution, a sort of mad-dog virus; every one who was inoculated with it, becoming rabid.