Quotes About Democracy

Americans have always thought they had a democracy form of government. We don't. We have a constitutional republic – a representative form of government.

He is not a president who is voted into power via a democratic process. He is not a prime minister acting on behalf of some heavenly parliament, nor is He a CEO. God does not rule as a dictator, usurping authority and maintaining power through a reign of terror. No. He is King.

On the other hand, had Obama refused to permit Trump's inauguration, on the grounds that he was still occupying the White House, or that he was planning to install Clinton there, then democracy in America would have been done for, at least for now.

Weak democracies are vulnerable to coup d'états because their institutions cannot absorb a frontal assault.

Simply put, democracy is viewed exclusively as a set of principles of government that, like the grammar of a language, can be delineated, taught, and applied so that when uttered, it will sound the same regardless of habits of reading or listening. This trend towards a grammatical and linguistic common sense also finds expression in theoretical de- bates about normativity and deontology in contemporary liberalism.

The US exports democracy, hence there being very little left for Americans

As life speeds up & the political becomes ever more personal democracy continues to foster change as fast as the movement of tectonic plates

It is no longer left versus right. It is authoritarianism versus freedom.

The rise of Donald Trump is what happens when you build Potemkin villages in Weimar republics.

Constitutional democracy, you see, is no romantic notion. It's our defense against ourselves, the one foe who might defeat us.

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.

Democracy has not failed; the intelligence of the race has failed before the problems the race has raised

Democracy is self-creating coherence.

Democracy makes many taxing demands on its practitioners, but suspension of the intelligence is not one of them.

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.

Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.

Ignorance is the enemy not just of our democratic system but also of our moral integrity as a nation, as the land of the free and home of the brave.

Alexis de Tocqueville.

A king had to die so a republic could live.

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

The combination of royal, aristocratic, and democratic power makes only a democracy.

Bush saw issues in terms of black and white. There were no subtleties and no shades of gray. The war in Iraq was a biblical struggle of good versus evil—something from the pages of the Book of Revelation. His decision to bring democracy to Iraq was equally arbitrary and unilateral. Bush's religious fundamentalism often obscured reality. And he expected his cabinet to fall into line, not debate possible alternatives.