Quotes About Democracy

Americans pride themselves on being a democratic society, but if you ask the average American "When was the last time you were part of a group of more than five people who made a collective decision on a more or less equal basis?" most will just scratch their heads.

Scholars tend to demand clear and irrefutable evidence for the existence of democratic institutions of any sort in the distant past. It's striking how they never demand comparably rigorous proof for top-down structures of authority. These latter are usually treated as a default mode of history: the kind of social structures you would simply expect to see in the absence of evidence for anything else.

There are many problems with this argument. We'll start with the most obvious. The idea that our current ideals of freedom, equality and democracy are somehow products of the 'Western tradition' would in fact have come as an enormous surprise to someone like Voltaire

Still, Lincoln went on to insist, what made the United States different from Europe, indeed what made its democracy possible, was

Nowadays, it's almost impossible for anyone living in a liberal democracy to say they are against freedom – at least in the abstract (in practice, of course, our ideas are usually much more nuanced). This is one of the lasting legacies of the Enlightenment and of the American and French Revolutions.

Defenders of capitalism generally make three broad historical claims: first, that it has fostered rapid scientific and technological development; second, that however much it may throw enormous wealth to a small minority, it does so in such a way that increases overall prosperity for everyone; third, that in doing so, it creates a more secure and democratic world. It is quite clear that in the twenty-first century, capitalism is not doing any of these things. (p. 143)

top-down chains of command are not particularly efficient: they tend to promote stupidity among those on top and resentful foot-dragging among those on the bottom. The greater the need to improvise, the more democratic the cooperation tends to become.

Modern states are simply one way in which the three principles of domination happened to come together, but this time with a notion that the power of kings is held by an entity called 'the people' (or 'the nation'), that bureaucracies exist for the benefit of said 'people', and in which a variation on old, aristocratic contests and prizes has come to be relabelled as 'democracy', most often in the form of national elections.

Modern states are democratic, or at least it's generally felt they really should be. yet democracy, in modern states, is conceived very differently to, say, the workings of an assembly in an ancient city, which collectively deliberated on common problems. Rather, democracy as we have come to know it is effectively a game of winners and losers played out among larger-than-life individuals, with the rest of us reduced largely to onlookers.

We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It's never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?

Anybody is a damn fool if he actually seeks to be President," he told friends. "You give up four of the very best years of your life. Lord knows it's a sacrifice. Some people think there is a lot of power and glory attached to the job. On the contrary the very workings of a democratic system see to it that the job has very little power.

The problem with a great democracy like the United States, George Kennan once noted, was that it was almost always like a sleeping giant, impervious to its surroundings until suddenly and belatedly awoken, when it proved so angry about what it discovered that it started lashing out wildly.

His closing promise of survival for "government of the people, by the people, for the people" may have had its origin in Daniel Webster's 1830 speech calling the American government "made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people," but more probably he derived it from a sermon of Theodore Parker, to which Herndon had called his attention, defining democracy as "a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people.

Americans, wrote a historian of the period, were in general so ignorant of the realities on the ground that 'when the Palestinians rose up in resistance they were able to see the Zionists' increasingly aggressive, colonialist behaviour as a defence of democracy and other progressive Western ideals', while this 'Palestinian resistance to imperialist invasion became a form of unwarranted offense against civilization'.28

It may . . . be pronounced as an universal axiom in politics, That an hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people voting by their representatives, form the best monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

All free governments must consist of two councils, a lesser and greater; or, in other words, of a senate and people. The people . . . would want wisdom, without the senate: The Senate, without the people, would want honestly.

So great is the force of laws, and of particular forms of government, and so little dependence have they on the humors and tempers of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them, as any which the mathematical sciences afford us. . . . It may . . . be pronounced as an universal axiom in politics, That an hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals, and a people voting by their representatives, form the best monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.

Democracies are turbulent. . . . Aristocracies are better adapted for peace and order, and accordingly were most admired by ancient writers; but they are jealous and oppressive.

All free governments must consist of two councils, a lesser and greater; or, in other words, of a senate and people. The people . . . would want wisdom, without the senate: The Senate, without the people, would want honesty.

Hitler saw the random bickering of the newspapers of the democratic countries as an inexcusable frittering-away of a vital national resource. He considered that the press could become a powerful instrument of national policy.

Democracy is the worst of all possible evils. Only one man can and should give the orders.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

Those who spy on the people end up themselves being spied on by the people. There's a fundamental democratic logic to it.

El que vigila al pueblo acaba siendo vigilado por el pueblo. Hay una fundamental lógica democrática en ello»