Democracy Quotes

Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

We Chileans have to be able to understand that in a democracy institutions must function freely and with sovereignty.

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us.

The transition from tyranny to democracy is very hard. The Syrian people have to handle this in a way that works in Syria. And the brutality of the Assad regime is unacceptable.

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.

We can't equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns.

In other words, the bar should be maintained at the level of a pluralistic and participatory democracy.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We're putting it into pamphlets. We're doing a publicity show. We're becoming symbols.

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.

You would like me to say that the veil will be ripped from the voters' eyes sometime between now and November, thereby restoring the proper version of Democracy to the House and Senate. I won't say that, of course. The simple reason is, I don't know.

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

Similarly, it is argued that the culture of Islam is incompatible with democracy. Basically, this conventional perspective of the Middle East thus contends that democracy in that region is neither possible nor even desirable.

The new social question is: democracy or the rule of the financial markets. We are currently witnessing the end of an era. The neoliberal ideology has failed worldwide. The U.S. movement Occupy Wall Street is a good example of this.

As Taiwan's friend and ally, I believe it is important for the United States to monitor the situation in the Taiwan Strait very carefully to help ensure Taiwan is not forced into a position which would endanger its freedom or its democracy.

Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy.

In democracy everyone has the right to be represented, even the jerks.

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.

According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background.

So, two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction.