Quotes About Democracy

There is much irony in the fact that Anglo-American Middle East policy, from Operation Ajax, the deposing of democratically elected, socialist, secularist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq in Iran in 1953, to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the overthrow of secular nationalist dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, has served in fact, if not intention, to ensure the continuing hold of Islam over nearly all the countries of the region.

I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I'm proud of it.

In proportion as the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected ruler's increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals.

he had charged that the democratic countries of the world had "retreated at every step" before the onslaught of fascism, and that "the Colored people of the United States must ever keep in mind that the reactionary forces seeking to smash democracy in Spain are the same forces which would destroy our constitutional rights at home.

Why do they hate us?" he asked rhetorically in an address to the Congress. "They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."13

That is clear enough. The dislike of America has nothing to do with democracy versus dictatorship, or wealth, or freedom of religion and assembly. It is directly related to American foot-dragging in stick-handling a just settlement of the Palestinian question, while continuing to meddle in Middle Eastern affairs, including the stationing of troops on soil considered sacred to Islam. In short, American foreign policy was the root of the conflict.

We are the rational managers of a modern democracy, taking the optimum decisions to safeguard and enhance the lives of busy citizens who haven't got the time to work things out for themselves.

Two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers gave us a democracy. It was based upon the simple, yet noble, idea that government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.

The only way to change is to vote. People are responsible.

There are three critical ingredients to democratic renewal and progressive change in America: good public policy, grassroots organizing and electoral politics.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

The people of this country, not special interest big money, should be the source of all political power.

Education and democracy have the same goal: The fullest possible development of human capabilities

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

There is real hope for a culture that makes it as easy to buy a book as it does a pack of cigarettes."--a civic leader quoted in a New American Library ad (1951) American Pulp tells the story of the midcentury golden age of pulp paperbacks and how they brought modernism to Main Street, democratized literature and ideas, spurred social mobility, and helped readers fashion new identities.

Paulo represented for those of us who are committed to imagine a world, in his own words, that is less ugly, more beautiful, less discriminatory, more democratic, less dehumanizing, and more humane.

The great challenge for the democratic-minded educator is how to transmit a sense of limit that can be ethically integrated by freedom itself. The more consciously freedom assumes its necessary limits, the more authority it has, ethically speaking, to continue to struggle in its own name.

If anyone, on the other hand, assuming a democratic, progressive position, therefore argues for the democratization of the programmatic organization of content, the democratization of his or her teaching—in other words, the democratization of curriculum—that person is regarded by the authoritarian as too spontaneous and permissive, or else as lacking in seriousness. If

To say one thing and do another - to take one's own word lightly - cannot inspire trust. To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and negate man [sic] is a lie.

No que diz respeito às relações autoridade-liberdade, [...], corremos também o risco de, negando à liberdade o direito de afirmar-se, exacerbar a autoridade ou, atrofiando esta, hipertrofiar aquela. Em outras palavras, corremos o risco de cair seduzidos ou pela tirania da liberdade ou pela tirania da autoridade, trabalhando, em qualquer das hipóteses, contra a nossa incipiente democracia.

Trust is contingent on the evidence which one party provides the others of his true, concrete intentions; it cannot exist if that party's words do not coincide with their actions. To say one thing and do another—to take one's own word lightly—cannot inspire trust. To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.

To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.

The recognition of Black citizenship progressed unevenly during Reconstruction and after, stymied by domestic terrorists, by high-ranking public officials who betrayed democracy, and by statesmen whose leadership proved to be politically indefensible and morally reprehensible.

A genuinely seismic event in American history, the Birmingham protests cleaved the nation in two, forcing citizens of all backgrounds to take honest measure of the intersection between race and democracy in national life.