Democracy Quotes
Hillary Rodham Clinton
There cannot be true democracy unless women's voices are heard. There cannot be true democracy unless women are given the opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives. There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.
4515 Jon Stewart
You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.
4226 Czesław Miłosz
In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.
1451 E.A. Bucchianeri
Errors do not cease to be errors simply because they’re ratified into law.
4325 Bill Moyers
Constitutional democracy, you see, is no romantic notion. It's our defense against ourselves, the one foe who might defeat us.
3901 Amit Kalantri
Bureaucrats and Politicians are different people, work of Bureaucrats makes us hate Politicians.
1314 Swami Dhyan Giten
There is a very simple relationship between increased socioeconomic rifts in the society and increased violence, criminality, war, increased lack of trust between people, health problems and social exclusion - but it seems to be very difficult for people to understand this simple relationship.
3426 Munia Khan
Slogans seem to be dead; this world is now busy chanting fears of lost democracy
2087 Martin Luther King Jr.
Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.
4299 E.A. Bucchianeri
It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.
1839 Nick Harkaway
A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that.
3542 Langston Hughes
LIBERTY!
FREEDOM!
DEMOCRACY!
True anyhow no matter how many
Liars use those words.
4356 José Martí
The first duty of a man is to think for himself
1524 Malcolm X
You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker
1086 Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.
4500 Albert Einstein
The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!
1833 Leon Trotsky
The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end.
4237 Norman Mailer
Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.
4654 Leon Trotsky
Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.
2433 Malcolm X
The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba - yes Cuba too.
1775 Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.
4107 Adam Smith
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
2343 José Martí
A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.
4871 José Martí
But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.
2465 Michael Collins
I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before.
4005 Vladimir Ilich Lenin
Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism.
2671 Fulton J. Sheen
The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law.
3434 Aysha Taryam
The lesson we are indebted to Egypt for, our future generations learned that in the face of oppression silence is never golden.
2468 Aysha Taryam
Democracy should always be viewed with a philosophical perspective rather than a political one, because after all democracy was born to a philosopher and murdered by a politician.
2996 Stefan Molyneux
The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters.
1844 Benjamin Franklin
Ohne Gedankenfreiheit gibt es keine Weisheit. Und ohne Redefreiheit keine öffentliche Freiheit.
2142 Amit Kalantri
Authority is not a power, it is a responsibility.
3514 Abraham Lincoln
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
-as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS
3105 E.A. Bucchianeri
Pops added,"you know, they say if you don't vote, you get the government you deserve."
"And if you do, you never get the results you expected," (Katherine) replied.
3810 Bertrand Russell
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.
3453 Allen Ginsberg
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!
2527 Mimsy Sadofsky
I think it's hard to learn democracy when we make children prisoners until they're nineteen years old.
2621 Mike Rose
A good education helps us make sense of the world and find our way in it
4947 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men.
4715 Amit Kalantri
Democracy changes its opinions from time to time, philosophy doesn't.
1730 Jeffrey Tucker
People and institutions that refuse to admit error eventually discredit themselves.
1601 Sheldon Rampton
Just as war is too important to leave it to the generals, science and technology are too important to leave in the hands of the experts.
1253 Alexis De Tocqueville
Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society.
3977 Derrick A. Bell
We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained.
4338 Auliq Ice
Transparency means to dedicate our thoughts and efforts to non privacy rules and not to defend negative intelligence ideas or surveillance programs.
2662 Mahatma Gandhi
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?
2402 Isaac Asimov
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of 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.
2532 H.L. Mencken
As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
3350 Paul Krugman
I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m proud of it.
4748 Thomas Jefferson
I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
3496 Gustave Flaubert
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeoisie.
3339 Naomi Klein
Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity.
2809 Aung San Suu Kyi
To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.
1884 Hany Ghoraba
If you distance yourself from reality and just cling to cliches about democracy find yourself a different job than analyzing politics
1770 Jean-Jacques Rousseau
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
3185 Franklin D. Roosevelt
A Radical is a man with both feet firmly planted-in the air. A Conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward. A Reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards. A Liberal is a man who uses his legs and his hands at the behest-at the command-of his head.
2997 Stacy Schiff
As Dio observed later, democracy sounded very well and good, “but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a most practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them.
3437 Jill Lepore
The Constitution is ink on parchment. It is forty-four hundred words. And it is, too, the accreted set of meanings that have been made of those words, the amendments, the failed amendments, the struggles, the debates - the course of events - over more than two centuries. It is not easy, but it is everyone’s.
3359 Alexis De Tocqueville
everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure
3670 Franklin D. Roosevelt
It is the purpose of government to see that not only the legitimate interests of the few are protected but that the welfare and rights of the many are conserved.
4475 Robert B. Reich
A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money assemble to express their dissatisfaction with the political consequences of this, they’re treated as public nuisances and evicted.
1850 Marc Cooper
Nothing - not even the US Army - more threatens the future of a democratic, pluralistic and (dare we wish, secular) Iraq than the political ascendancy of Islamic fascists like Al Sadr.
2345 Carl Schmitt
Every actual democracy rests on the principle that not only are equals equal but unequals will not be treated equally. Democracy requires, therefore, first homogeneity and second - if the need arises elimination or eradication of heterogeneity.
4463 Paul Lafargue
In proportion as the mass of citizens who possess political rights increases, and the number of elected ruler’s increases, the actual power is concentrated and becomes the monopoly of a smaller and smaller group of individuals.
3389 J.M. Coetzee
Demokratie gestattet keine Politik außerhalb des demokratischen Systems. In diesem Sinne ist Demokratie totalitär.
4500 Michael Hogan
The problem with the politicians of both parties in the US is that neither of them have a real agenda except to feather their own nests. They both have their hands deep in corporate pockets. All the rest is sleight of hand and distraction to keep the public occupied with trivia, divided against each other, and thinking their vote matters.
4468 Robert V. Remini
Republics exist as long as the people "adhere to principles and virtue.
1403 Javier Cercas
En democracia la política es un teatro y nadie puede actuar en un teatro sin fingir.
1313 Mario Cuomo
Outrage is easy, cheap, and oversold. The nation needs less anger and more thoughtful reflection, less shouting and more listening, less dissembling and more honesty.
3732 Alexis De Tocqueville
Ainsi donc, en s’alliant à un pouvoir politique, la religion augmente sa puissance sur quelques-uns, et perd l’espérance de régner sur tous.
3180 Toba Beta
When bad news sells, money politics buys.
2613 Egon Bahr
International politics is never about democracy and human rights. It's about the interests of states. Remember that, no matter what you are told in history lessons.
2876 Michael Bassey Johnson
Good leaders come together to solve problems in order to make a peaceful coexistence, but just a single soul can become the leathery meat in the soup.
4294 Henry Adams
I, too, like yourself was a good party man: my party was that of the Church; I was ultramontane. Your party system is one of your thefts from our Church; your National Convention is our Ecunemic Council; you abdicate reason, as we do, before its decisions; and you yourself Mr. Ratcliffe, you are a Cardinal.
4158 Henry Adams
Washington was no politician as we understand the word," replied Ratcliffe abruptly. "He stood outside of politics. The thing couldn't be done today. The people don't like that sort of royal airs.
2846 Mohammad Hatta
Diktator yang bergantung pada kewibawaan orang seorang tak lama umurnya. Sebab itu pula, sistem yang dilahirkan Soekarno tidak akan lebih panjang umurnya dari Soekarno sendiri. Umur manusia terbatas. Apabila Soekarno sudah tidak ada lagi, maka sistemnya akan roboh seperti rumah kartu.
1515 Reinhold Niebuhr
Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.
2257 Louis De Potter
La quantité de critiques reçues concernant tout sujet est inversement proportionnelle à la valeur exacte du sujet
3749 Gilad Atzmon
Democracy today, especially in the English-speaking world, is a political system that specialises in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious types in leadership positions.
4645 Robert B. Reich
Powerlessness can be a self-fulfilling prophesy. There is much that is wrong with America. But it will only be made right only if we force change to occur.
3566 H.L. Mencken
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
3904 Margaret Thatcher
Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.
3136 Aldous Huxley
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
3419 Helen Thomas
You don't spread democracy with a barrel of a gun.
2997 Michael Bassey Johnson
Insurgence and all forms of evil in a society doesn't describes her as a failure, but vividly shows a lack of love for one another.
3825 Otto Von Bismarck
[N]icht durch Reden und Majoritätsbeschlüsse werden die großen Fragen der Zeit entschiedenen [...] sondern durch Eisen und Blut.
4169 William Morris
...I do not want art for a few; any more than education for a few; or freedom for a few...
2329 Amit Kalantri
System fails when people with ability don't have authority and people with authority don't have ability.
4123 Yanis Varoufakis
Had history been democratic in its ways, there would have been no farming and no industrial revolution. Both leaps into the future were occasioned by unbearably painful crises that made most people wish they could recoil into the past.
2584 Noah Webster
A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
3832 Auliq Ice
It's important to remember that peace, liberty and freedom changes many aspects in our thoughts as far as life is concerned.
2052 Auliq Ice
Rather than caving in to protests, let us know who is in charge by setting boundaries.
4435 Aspen Baker
Infusing the cultural war with love, respect and empathy is the responsibility of every one who cares about the health and wellbeing of women, our families and communities, and our democracy.
3508 Robert G. Ingersoll
I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism of the family. I believe in liberty, equality and love.
3991