Quotes About Democracy

The only people that should vote should be legal.

I am blessed to live in a democracy, not a totalitarian state. But the democracy I cherish is constantly threatened by a brand of politics that clothes avarice and the arrogance of power in patriotic and religious garb.

A politician who brings personal integrity into leadership helps us reclaim the popular trust that distinguishes true democracy from its cheap imitations.

American democracy at its best is like that island of restored prairie. In a world where human diversity is often suppressed—where authoritarian regimes have kept people lined up like rows of cultivated corn, harvesting their labor and sometimes their lives to protect the interests of the state—the diversity that grows in a democracy delights the heart as well as the eye.

Democratic action depends upon…free spaces, where people experience a schooling in citizenship and learn a vision of the common good in the course of struggling for change. —Sara Evans and Harry Boyte, Free Spaces

I believe in democracy—in its indisputable achievements and its unfulfilled promise. I believe in American political institutions—in the genius inherent in their design and in the undeniable good they have done when put to their best use. I believe in the power of the human heart—in its capacity for truth and justice, love and forgiveness.

It is in the common good to hold our political differences and the conflicts they create in a way that does not unravel the civic community on which democracy depends. My

But if the teacher does little more than dictate that information and then demand that students memorize and parrot it on tests, they are not learning democratic values. Instead, they are learning to survive as subjects of an autocracy: keep your head down, your mouth shut, and repeat the party line whether or not you understand it or believe it.

But our democratic institutions are not automated. They must be inhabited by citizens and citizen leaders who know how to hold conflict inwardly in a manner that converts it into creativity, allowing it to pull them open to new ideas, new courses of action, and each other. That kind of tension-holding is the work of the well-tempered heart: if democracy is to thrive as that restored prairie is thriving, our hearts and our institutions must work in concert.

There are as many good things about civilization as bad. Perhaps more. And we would miss them. From toothbrushes to electric lights. From clean water to democracy. From bookstores to the kind of gentle, tolerant argumentation that never resorts to violence and allows for the slow changing of opinions,…and the gradual and diverse evolving of everybody's minds. The core of what we now know that it means

But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.

There's an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.

The other argument [about the Iraq War] was about argument itself. It characterized any argument about policy (whether, in fact, Iraq did have weapons of mass destruction and whether regime change could be effected through an invasion) as unnecessary, dithering, disloyal, and possibly even deliberately evil, since the correct course of action was so obvious. Major media outlets demonized dissent. In a democracy.

what did we expect when, even in so-called democratic countries, we have become so selfish and passive, letting factions of tiny, powerful and unaccountable elites dominate both politics and economics? That applies to most leading political parties, even in democracies, whose overriding concerns usually seem to be getting re-elected and protecting big business.

On notera par amusement le privilège commun qui associe fortuitement ces trois termes : la mélancolie , après tout, ne métamorphose-t-elle pas le corps en théâtre sur lequel l'âme joue ses drames universels dans une terrible démocratie du malheur, sans privilège de caste ni de rang ?

The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them.

James Madison said it another way: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

Slowly but surely, we are acquiring that famous culture of democracy, which is our objective.

I think the Iraqi people have shown extraordinary patience and courage in the last few months. They have really put a political system on the way to success, to a real democracy here.

the Arab Spring, which has transformed Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and, as I write, shortly Syria. These transformations each demonstrate the potency of the idea of democratic institutions.

But in truth, those of us fortunate enough to have lived all our lives in a mature democracy only think of elections because we take so much else for granted. Democracy is not just elections; it is a whole set of rules that limit what government can do.

That's the greatest thing about wikis: they combine the best features of democracy and autocracy. Everybody has an equal say. But some got bigger says than others.

The question that poses itself is exactly what one means by "democracy." Is it to be identified with self-conscious peoples ruling themselves, or does it entail the establishment and maintenance of "civic culture" by experts with "progressive" social views? Although these two opposed understandings have coexisted in the same societies, they are fundamentally incompatible.

The Civil War won formal rights for Negroes, but failed to win social justice and factual democracy. The actual result has been segregation, and fear and ignorance for both whites and blacks.