Democracy Quotes

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

If those in charge of our society - politicians, corporate executives, and owners of press and television - can dominate our ideas, they will be secure in their power. They will not need soldiers patrolling the streets. We will control ourselves.

I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.

A man is no less a slave because he is allowed to choose a new master once in a term of years.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!True anyhow no matter how manyLiars use those words.

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.

One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult - to begin a war and to end it.

I lived in countries that had no democracy... so I don't find myself in the same luxury as you do. You grew up in freedom, and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.

I don't believe in democracy. In the second place, neither did our white forefathers. I believe, as they did, in a republican authoritarian republic with a limited electorate — just like the one the writers of our Constitution meant this country to be. When these white Christian patriots sat down to write the Declaration of Independence, there were no black citizens for them to worry about.

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

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy-but that could change.

Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.

Don't interfere with anything in the Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of our liberties.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits.

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.

I believe that during these times, we should not forget that many sacrificed to regain our democracy. We cannot just keep quiet because that is what happened during martial law. Our dictator then believed that he can do anything to keep himself in power.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

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

The Constitution of the United States was made not merely for the generation that then existed, but for posterity- unlimited, undefined, endless, perpetual posterity.

Islam is not a race...Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not 'Islamophobic' to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy.

Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials.

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.

I am not an icon of democracy. You are all, collectively, the icon of democracy.

The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.

The road to democracy may be winding and is like a river taking many curves, but eventually the river will reach the ocean.

In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.

Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely

[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.

In whose delusional mind is democracy made 'better' by allowing wealthy people to control more of it?

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other's consent.

Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable - a most sacred right - a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.

A democracy is ... accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

I believe that during these times, we should not forget that many sacrificed to regain our democracy.

If we are to keep democracy, there must be a commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.

We're not perfect, but we do have democracy.

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

If pigs could vote, the man with the slop bucket would be elected swineherd every time, no matter how much slaughtering he did on the side.

When a just cause reaches its flood-tide...whatever stands in its way must fall before its overwhelming force.

It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.

Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.

Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.

The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery.

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.

Only a knowledgeable, empowered and vocal citizenry can perform well in democracy.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right.

Nobody should be allowed to tinker with democracy. We will not discontinue the good works of the past government.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am.".

Let me reassure that the Kingdom of Cambodia a country with independence, neutrality, peace, freedom, democracy and human rights as you all have seen, shall be existing with no end.

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

Increase in the wealth per capita fosters democracy; but the latter, at least according to what we have been able to observe up to now, entails great destruction of wealth and even eventually dries up the sources of it. Hence it is its own grave-digger, it destroys what gave it birth.

The difference between Democrats and Republicans is: Democrats have accepted some ideas of Socialism cheerfully, while Republicans have accepted them reluctantly

Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

You don't spread democracy with a barrel of a gun.

Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen.

I don't have any formula for ousting a dictator or building democracy. All I can suggest is to forget about yourself and just think of your people. It's always the people who make things happen.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.

I think if people value democracy, they had damn well better get out and exercise their right to vote while their vote still means something.

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

Protection of private property is a fundamental right protected in a strong democracy.

Sycophancy toward those who hold power is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist.... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience.

To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

I like the noise of democracy.

Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence.