Popular quotes about Democracy! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
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.
Jimmy CarterHistory provides many examples of democracy crushed by people who said to be the champion of "genuine democracy" and "the people's real meaning". The realization about this may lead us to a defence position that conceals that democracy is an extraordinarily demanding way of rule. It must constantly find new ways to revitalize, to reach out to people and make them active. Dictatorships offers a machinery of obedience, closed and externally well-oiled. Democracy is based on fairness, openness and pulsating life. Therefore it must constantly be won again.
Olof PalmeDemocracy'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.
Sam ShepardThe Internet has brought democracy to so many other things. It's about time the Internet brought democracy to democracy.
Joe GreeneAccording to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible.... The essence of perestroika lies in the fact that it unites socialism with democracy and revives the Leninist concept of socialist construction both in theory and in practice. We want more socialism and, therefore, more democracy.
Mikhail GorbachevWhen we talk about democracy, if the people's stomach is empty, democracy is also empty. Democracy can not be installed by fiat; it must be achieved by the people themselves.
Y. C. James YenSo much of democracy is built on antagonism. It institutionalizes a certain kind of antagonism. This is not to say that we shouldn't have any democracy, but the fact is that democracy has hardened political identities and made them more violent.
Pankaj MishraModern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.
John DeweyThe procedure we are pursuing is that of true democracy. Semi-democracy accepts the dictatorship of a majority in establishing its arbitrary, ergo, unnatural, laws. True democracy discovers by patient experiment and unanimous acknowledgement what the laws of nature or universe may be for the physical support and metaphysical satisfaction of the human intellect's function in universe.
R. Buckminster FullerThere can be no democracy in a country where people are uneducated and do not understand their own position in the society and the world. People 'rule' only if they can make 'educated decisions'. Democracy means 'rule of the people'.
Andre VltchekIn my opinion, using different kinds of epithets and adjectives in connection with the word democracy is a sign of mere hypocrisy, to put it mildly. Either there's democracy, or there isn't.
Garry KasparovDemocracy is buying a big house you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you wish were dead. And, unlike communism, democracy does not mean having just one ineffective political party; it means having two ineffective political parties.
Johnny CarsonMy argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if George W.Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.
John SaylesDemocracy appears to me potentially a higher form of political organization than any kind of dictatorship. But if it turns out that in America, which could afford a decent living for everyone, the comfortable majority is willing to condone the misery and abuse of a minority for an indefinite period, the exploitation by the majority becomes as repugnant as exploitation by an oligarchy, and democracy loses half its supposed superiority.
Benjamin SpockIt is not the armed forces which can protect our democracy. It is the moral strength of democracy which alone can give any meaning to the efforts at military security.
Max LernerElections are a festival of democracy. Everyone must join this festival of democracy and strengthen it.
Narendra ModiA democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.
Chris HedgesI do believe that what I have called populist democracy is to be preferred to what I have called elitist democracy.
Torbjorn TannsjoState violence operating under the guise of personal safety and security, while parading as a bulwark of democracy, actually does the opposite and cancels out democracy as the incommensurable sharing of existence that makes the political possible.
Henry GirouxDemocracy in Yemen did not stop, instead it is in a continuous development, there is no other way to follow rather than democracy, it is our national way for building up our country, it was not imposed on us by others.
Bill VaughanIf you give up on politics, you're giving up on democracy. And if you give up on democracy, you're basically saying to the moneyed interests, the powerful people and institutions of society, take it all. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then we give up. Then we are 100 percent plutocracy.
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Aviva ChomskyInstitutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.
Huey NewtonWe live in a very peculiar world. Democracy isn't discussed, as if it was taken for granted, as if democracy had taken God's place, who is also not discussed.
Jose SaramagoIn general, democracy and individualism have advanced in spite of and often against specific economic interest. Both democracy and individualism have been based upon financial sacrifice, not gain. Even in Athens, a large part of the 7,000 citizens who participated regularly in assemblies were farmers who had to give up several days' work to go into town to talk and listen.
John Ralston SaulThe father of democracy is Patrice Lumumba, the first prime minister after our independence, who was assassinated under conditions that to this day nobody can clearly understand. So, for me, this title is not the most important thing. You can go down in history as the father of democracy, but you can also go down as the person who brought about chaos just by stepping down.
Joseph KabilaMoreover, as we live in an era of the ascendancy of democracy and human rights, we must see that Taiwan has been a vibrant democracy with a democratically elected president and legislature.
Nick LampsonWell, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.
Grace Lee BoggsIf you want democracy, you have got to be prepared to accept the responsibilities of democracy. The people have to take part. They have to understand that they have the power to move things, and they must really commit themselves to change if they want it.
Aung San Suu KyiSmall use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.
Jeannette RankinOf governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.
AristotleEven if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away.
Harriet MartineauFor me, a better democracy is a democracy where women do not only have the right to vote and to elect but to be elected.
Michelle BacheletMoney power cannot be separated from democratic power without miscarriage and ensuing frustration - political and economic. Democracy implies the sovereignty of man; and, since man cannot be sovereign without the money power, there can not be democracy under the political money system.
E.C. RiegelPeople are constantly applying double standards. Take the United States, for example. Washington wants the whole world to admire the country for its democracy. Then the government sends out its army, in the name of this democracy, and leaves behind the kind of chaos we see in Iraq.
Jacob ZumaDemocracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch.
UnknownWe have a huge struggle for our sense of what a democracy is. We're not living in reality when we think we have some sort of democracy. We're really on the edge. We have two presidents who lost the popular vote but won the election. This is not working.
Louise ErdrichNever before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization.
Zbigniew BrzezinskiMy objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.
Steve EarleIn a democracy, it is the people who are sovereign. Therefore, with regard to the promotion of democracy at the local, country and regional levels, civil society must have a stronger voice in all political processes.
Alfred-Maurice de ZayasI do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.
John AdamsThe Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing sustaining and powerful movement whose interest is to prove that religion has a healing side as well as a killing side, and that democracy is the consequence of conscience
Bill MoyersI also know that there have been many times in our history when the proximity of an election has induced exactly the kind of leadership and consensus-building that produce progress in our democracy.
Joe LiebermanDemocracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits.
Elizabeth DrewSome of the reasons why Muslims would look down on America or even countries that have democracy, is because that's what they've been taught all their life. And it's not really their fault if you think about it, it's their government's fault for teaching people that America, them over there across the ocean, they're the devil.
Cristian MachadoThey've been screaming about the death of literacy for years, but I think TV is the Gutenberg [printing] press. I think TV is the only thing that keeps us vaguely in democracy even if it's in the hands of the corporate culture. If you're an artist you write in your time. Moaning about the fact that maybe people read more books a hundred years ago - that's not true. I think the same percentage has always read.
Sherman AlexieThe novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.
Jane Smiley