Quotes About Democracy

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America. How else is the world to take America seriously, when democracy at home is daily being outraged, free speech suppressed, peaceable assemblies broken up by overbearing and brutal gangsters in uniform; when free press is curtailed and every independent opinion gagged? Verily, poor as we are in democracy, how can we give of it to the world?

Democracy doesn't recognize east or west and democracy is simply people's will. Therefore, I do not acknowledge that there are various models of democracy; there is just democracy itself.

What worker or peasant can pay 80 - 90 million dollars to elect a senator or 4 billion to elect a president? Only great capital can do that. That is why we say that bourgeois democracy has been evolving in the last years into dollar democracy, this is not the democracy of sovereignty, and only the people can determine that.

According 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.

When 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.

[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often... oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.

Burma is not yet a full-fledged democracy. We have started working on the road to full democracy. We have a lot of things to do in order to build a democratic structure and to be become a full-fledged democracy.

How can there be democracy if the leadership in the United States and Britain don't uphold the values which my father's generation fought the Nazis, millions of people gave their lives against the Soviet Union's regime, didn't they? Because of what? Democracy. And what democracy meant. No torture, no camps, no detention forever or without trial, without charges. In solitary confinement. Those techniques which are not just alleged, they have actually been written about by the FBI. I don't think it's being far left - I hope that I'm wrong to consider that it's far left to uphold the rule of law.

I gather you yellow-skinned men, despite your triumphs in sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, still don't have democracy. Some politician on the radio was saying that that's why we Indian are going to beat you: we may not have sewage, drinking water, and Olympic gold medals, but we do have democracy. If I were making a country, I'd get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy, then I'd go about giving pamphlets and statues of Gandhi to other people, but what do I know? I am just a murderer!

Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.

What we are seeing in cities such as Chicago, Athens and other dead zones of capitalism throughout the world is the beginning of a long struggle for the institutions, values and infrastructures that make critical education and community the center of a robust, radical democracy. This is a challenge for young people and all those invested in the promise of a democracy that extends not only the meaning of politics, but also a commitment to economic justice and democratic social change.

Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious, will land itself in chaos and may be self-destroyed.

Democracy is no solution - it's just 51% bossing the other 49% around. For God's sake, Hitler was democratically elected! Democracy is just mob rule dressed up in a coat and tie.

In 1988, when democracy was restored, the military establishment was still very powerful. The extremist groups were still there. And when the aid and assistance to Pakistan was cut, we had to adopt harsh economic policies. So in a way, it showed that democracy doesn't pay, and the military was able to reassert itself.

I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.

The international community can't trust such a government. If the government of Iran wants the international community to believe in what it says, it should try to bring true, pure democracy into the country. The political solution to the energy issue or the nuclear case is democracy in Iran.

I am not concerned with dodging the odium of the word. The proposed definition of democracy is socialistic . . . (democracy) should be characterized not so much socialistic, as unscrupulously and loyally nationalistic.

Americans are quite skeptical about the goal of promoting democracy. People feel it's a desirable goal, but, from a commonsense point of view, both Republicans and Democrats have come to the conclusion that democracy is something that countries can only come to on their own.

Advocating democracy has, by other people, often been taken as a form of imperialism, and not without some justification. So the important thing in a democracy is that it doesn't necessarily have to agree with what America's interests are, and it doesn't necessarily have to be serving American interests.

For Russia, there is not and there may not be another political option but democracy. However, Russian democracy is... not at all the realization of standards imposed on us from outside.

Democracy needs to start with an open Presidential debate. So come on out and let's take back the promise of our democracy.

Democracy feeds on argument, on the discussion as to the right way forward. This is the reason why respecting the opinion of others belongs to democracy.

And the principle which distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable.

The ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy. This is also why society as a whole has no control over technological developments. And this is one of the gravest threats to democracy in the near future. It is, then, imperative to develop a democratic technological culture.

Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.

Everybody now seems to be talking about democracy. I don't understand this. As I think of it, democracy isn't like a Sunday suit to be brought out and worn only for parades. It's the kind of a life a decent man leads, it's something to live for and to die for.

Industrial capitalism brought representative democracy, but with a weak public mandate and inert citizenry. The digital age offers a new democracy based on public deliberation and active citizenship.

The claim that democracy and efficiency are contradictory is nonsense. That's evident in the history of democracy itself, because it is only democrats who were and continue to be capable of learning from mistakes. A more appropriate question is to ask whether a country like China, which has been so incredibly successful economically, is actually inefficient in light of its environmental destruction and its corruption. In China's perception, however, the democratic model is doubtlessly inferior.

How do you have a democratic empire, how do you have an imperial foreign policy built on a democracy polity. It's like some sort of strange mythical beast that's part lion, part dragon. You know at the bottom is a democracy, and then it's an imperial power around the world.

A democracy is predicated on an educated citizenry. You cannot have a democracy with people that are more interested in what Nicole Kidman is doing or whoever the latest fashion model is.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

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.

Democracy destroys the unity of the Rumanian nation, dividing it among political parties, making Rumanians hate one another, and thus exposing a divided people to the united congregation of Jewish power at a difficult time in the nation's history. This argument alone is so persuasive as to warrant the discarding of democracy in favor of anything that would ensure our unity - or life itself. For disunity means death.

Talk loud enough about human rights and it gives the impression of democracy at work, justice at work. There was a time when the United States waged war to topple democracies, because back then democracy was a threat to the Free Market. Countries were nationalising their resources, protecting their markets.... So then, real democracies were being toppled. They were toppled in Iran, they were toppled all across Latin America, Chile.

I am kind of a sucker for democracy, so I do think that what kinds of citizens we have in our societies are more foundational than what kinds of governments we have, and that the responsibility for self-government is ultimately with us. But we also have learned through a couple thousand years of democracy that democracies are only as good as people's capacity to reflect on those questions.

Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Well, it all began with Democracy. Before we had the vote all the power was in the hands of rich people. If you had money you could get health care, education, look after yourself when you were old, and what democracy did was to give the poor the vote and it moved power from the marketplace to the polling station, from the wallet...to the ballot.

You said, 'How is it possible for democracy to work with an illiterate people who are dying of hunger?' But with that people we made a democracy work.

Ultimately, we didn't go to Germany to create a democracy. We went to overthrow Adolf Hitler. But once a democracy was there, Germany was a much bigger supporter of and help to our national interests, both economic and security than had ever been before.

Democracy is an internal subject of the developing society. There are fundamentals of democracy, and they should be understood universally in different countries.

Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.

Democracy is the common pursuit of mankind, and all countries must earnestly protect the democratic rights of the people.

Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political — legislative and administrative — decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.

In many ways, the media today makes dictatorship impossible. But it also makes democracy intolerable.

Democracy, which began by liberating man politically, has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion.

Occupy did something fabulous. What Occupy made clear was that there is an inequality at the heart of American democracy that undermines it, if not ruins it. That served a purpose. It suggested that we need a new language and we need a new way of understanding exactly how politics leaves people out, particularly young people.

My start in politics was watching my parents go to the polls on election day. It reminded me that being an active, engaged citizen and voter is critical to the success of our democracy.

Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.