Quotes About Democracy

We have to distinguish illiberal societies from places where freedom of speech and assembly, media pluralism, and the protection of minorities are under attack. These political rights are not just about liberalism (or the rule of law); they are constitutive of democracy as such.

even if ballots are not stuffed by the ruling party on the day of the election, a vote can be undemocratic if the opposition can never make its case properly and journalists are prevented from reporting a government's failures.

When blacks vote overwhelmingly for a black candidate, they are only exercising their civil rights. When whites vote for the white opponent, they are racist.

The basic problem is that web 2.0 tools are not supportive of democracy by design. They are tools designed to gather spy-agency-like data in a seductive way, first and foremost, but as a side effect they tend to provide software support for mob-like phenomena.

Mob rule cannot be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.

a salesman is an it that stinks to please but whether to please itself or someone else makes no more difference than if it sells hate condoms education snakeoil vac uumcleaners terror strawberries democ ra(caveat emptor)cy superfluous hair

To understand the impact of this combination of gerrymandering and the geographic factors, consider that Barack Obama received some 5 million more votes than Mitt Romney did in 2012 yet carried only 209 House districts. Romney carried 226.

Republicans won in 2010 and 2014 because some 40 million fewer Americans vote in midterms than in presidential elections, and a substantial majority of those 40 million is inclined toward the Democrats.

In the 2000 election, George W. Bush carried 30 of the 50 states even as he lost the popular vote to Al Gore.

cuts that that majorities of the voters

You will smile here at the consistency of those democratists who, when they are not on their guard, treat the humbler part of the community with the greatest contempt, whilst, at the same time, they pretend to make them the depositories of all power.

lie together in one short sentence: namely, that we have acquired a right 1. To choose our own governors. 2. To cashier them for misconduct. 3. To frame a government for ourselves. This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of rights

The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive.

Under a democratical government, the citizens exercise the powers of sovereignty; and those powers will be first abused, and afterwards lost, if they are committed to an unwieldy multitude.

Supongo que la gente no ha parado de alterar las normas desde que los griegos inventaron la democracia o, incluso, desde que el hombre inventó la rueda.

Because widespread participation is so central to popular sovereignty, we can say that the less political participation there is in a society, the weaker the democracy.

A free press can, of course, be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.

A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly, without freedom a press will never be anything but bad.

As I understand the term, it is of the very essence of democracy that the individual citizen shall be invested with the inalienable and sovereign right to make an ass of himself; and furthermore, that he shall be invested with the sovereign right of publicity to tell all the world that he is doing so.

A country which proposes to make use of modern war as an instrument of policy must possess a highly centralized, all-powerful executive, hence the absurdity of talking about the defense of democracy by force of arms. A democracy which makes or effectively prepares for modern scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic.

That we should all have a say in choosing our own rulers and that those rulers 'powers over us should be limited—these principles are in obvious tension, as every society that has tried to combine liberty and democracy has discovered. Without Protestantism and its peculiar preoccupations, that strange and marvelous synthesis could never have come into being as it has.

In a democracy, a politician who didn't know where he stood might lose an election. In Russia, he'd lose everything.

For what is socialism? With the frills removed, it is people collectively running society. Instead of being the prisoners of anarchic capitalist competition and the mad rush for profit at any cost, it is working together for the common good. Our tremendous co-operative power would be controlled, not by a ruling class in the search for ever greater profits, but democratically and for the fulfillment of human need.

Political bargaining and political entrepreneurship can be seen naked, stripped of the flattering wardrobe of democracy, rule of law and state building.