Against Democracy Quotes

#1. Who is against democracy? Is it the one who calls for peaceful resistance, or the one who bombs people, sheds their blood and leads them away from the leaders under feeble and dirty pretexts?

Muqtada Al Sadr

#2. May I just single out for salutations, on the 'anti-war' side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam.

Julie Burchill

#3. I think it is something that is so important, to be very aware of the direction in which the 21st century is going with all this blind faith in democracy. And by the way, I am not against democracy - I am against the blind faith that is being put in democracy.

Alfonso Cuaron

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

Winston S. Churchill

#5. When the evidence for and against "democracy being the finest system of government yet invented" is weighed, George W Bush is going to tip the scales very heavily against.

Andre The BFG

#6. Since pacifists have more freedom of action in countries where traces of democracy survive, pacifism can act more effectively against democracy than for it. Objectively the pacifist is pro-Nazi.

George Orwell

#7. The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

Alex Carey

#8. Obamacare is a crime against democracy because a material part of that bill was not disclosed to the Senate nor to the House of Representatives. The funding was hidden in the bill. That was fraud and I can't vote for any budget that fails to bring back that money from Obamacare.

Michele Bachmann

#9. Far from being the product of a democratic revolution and of an opposition to English institutions, the constitution of the United States was the result of a powerful reaction against democracy, and in favor of the traditions of the mother country.

John Acton

#10. Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression.

Taslima Nasrin

#11. The threats against democracy today are in general completely normal. They walk around in costume and tie.

Carl B. Hamilton

#12. Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy.

Eduardo Galeano

#13. If you want a good argument against democracy, spend five minutes with a voter.

Winston Churchill

#14. The best defense against democracy is to distract people.

Noam Chomsky

#15. You know who is against democracy in the Middle East? The husbands. They got used to their way of life. Now, the traditional way of life must change. Everybody must change. If you don't give equal rights to women, you can't progress.

Shimon Peres

#16. In a democracy, there is no check against despotism, because the principle of democracy is supposed to be itself a check. But it guarantees only that the majority will not be despotically ruled.

B.F. Skinner

#17. The war waged against terror since September 11 puts a strain on democracy itself, because it is mostly waged in secret, using means that are at the edge of both law and morality. Yet democracies have shown themselves capable of keeping the secret exercise of power under control.

Michael Ignatieff

#18. Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.

Irving Babbitt

#19. We want the will of the people, not the votes of the people; and to give a man a vote against his will is to make voting more important than the democracy it declares.

G.K. Chesterton

#20. Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.

H.L. Mencken

#21. The consent of the governed is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.

Walter Lippmann

#22. Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest.

Hugo Chavez

#23. I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.

James Russell Lowell

#24. The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy.

Frank Miller

#25. The more government dependents, the more likely that democracy will become a conspiracy against self-reliance.

James Bovard

#26. In 2003, I warned of a 'creeping coup' in Russia against the forces of democracy and market capitalism in Russia.

John McCain

#27. There are certain things in a man that have to be won, not forced; inspired, not compelled. Among these are many, I should say most, of the things that constitute the good life. All are essential to democracy. All are proof against its enemies.

Alfred Whitney Griswold

#28. Social Democracy preached against capitalism for half a century. After the November revolution the Reds had the opportunity to direct capitalism into the proper paths: but nothing happened!

Julius Streicher

#29. Look at the orators in our republics; as long as they are poor, both state and people can only praise their uprightness; but once they are fattened on the public funds, they conceive a hatred for justice, plan intrigues against the people and attack the democracy.

Aristophanes

#30. Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.

Michael Novak

#31. 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.

Adam Smith

#32. Under a system in which no single question is submitted to the electorate for direct decision, an ardent minority for or against a particular measure may often count for more than an apathetic majority.

Patrick, Baron Devlin

#33. The defense of our democracy against the forces that threaten it from without has made some of its failures to function at home glaringly apparent.

Wendell Willkie

#34. Rather than signalling the aspiration for system of checks and balances against absolute power, democracy become a euphemism for majority rule.

Peter Mansfield

#35. The war against ISIS will pose many new challenges for the next commander-in-chief. The last two presidents [George W. Bush and Barack Obama] pursued a Middle East policy that supported toppling dictators to try to promote democracy.

Wolf Blitzer

#36. Socialism, Puritanism, Philistinism, Christianity - he saw them all as allotropic forms of democracy, as variations upon the endless struggle of quantity against quality, of the weak and timorous against the strong and enterprising, of the botched against the fit.

H.L. Mencken

#37. Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings.

Jan Smuts

#38. You're a part of the order if you're not against it.

Saleem Sharma

#39. The unending chase for money, I believe, threatens to steal our democracy itself. I've used the word 'corrupting,' and I want to be very clear about it: I mean by it not the corruption of individuals, but a corruption of a system itself that all of us are forced to participate in against our will.

Scott Peters

#40. The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated ... Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it.

Benazir Bhutto

#41. Notice, by extension, that in a democracy those committed to non-procreation could never, in the long run, prevail politically against those committed to procreation.

David Benatar

#42. Changing entrenched systems is daunting; the odds against reshaping the nation's police forces are high. But there are few things more important than making sure their profession is the brave, honorable service it should be. We have to do it, or watch our communities and our democracy disintegrate.

Ann Medlock

#43. Our nation is rich and our people can be rich. 2014 elections is a fight against poverty.

Narendra Modi

#44. I'm against unanswerable concentrations of power, whether that be government or private industry or religious figures - anybody who is not accountable to the larger social climate or society for the power they wield, that concerns me. I'm very pro-democracy.

Daniel Suarez

#45. Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state.

Vladimir Lenin

#46. The real strength of democracy is that anyone who is not specifically against it must ultimately be for it, while communism suffers from the great tactical liability that anyone who is not specifically for it is eventually forced to oppose it.

Edwin O. Reischauer

#47. We will not be intimidated or pushed off the world stage by people who do not like what we stand for, and that is, freedom, democracy and the fight against disease, poverty and terrorism.

Madeleine Albright

#48. most reliable predictor of whether a country is violent within itself - or will use military violence against another country - is not poverty, natural resources, religion, or even degree of democracy; it's violence against females.

Gloria Steinem

#49. It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history ... [It is] the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history, as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.

Ronald Reagan

#50. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan, 'You're either with us or against us.'

Vladimir Putin

#51. Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.

Michael Sandel

#52. Why would a black or brown nation stake its future on America's model of democracy when within its own borders the United States enforced discrimination and savagery against people who looked just like them? The

Margot Lee Shetterly

#53. Constitutional democracy, you see, is no romantic notion. It's our defense against ourselves, the one foe who might defeat us.

Bill Moyers

#54. That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the world.

John Adams

#55. A people inspired by democracy, human rights and economic opportunity will turn their back decisively against extremism.

Benazir Bhutto

#56. Our ancestors wholeheartedly sacrificed their lives to fight against tyranny, and we are allowing that very same tyranny to exist! Let us open our eyes!

Yanan Melo

#57. One only knows the sins of democracy against virtue when one is worthy enough to suffer from them.

Raheel Farooq

#58. In a democracy, allegations will never improve situations. So, I'm against allegations, but I always welcome criticism.

Narendra Modi

#59. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

Penn Jillette

#60. A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.

Vladimir Lenin

#61. In the name of the rule of law, democracy and human rights, we cannot accept that the rights of individuals (Arab or Muslim) be trampled upon, or that populations are targeted and discriminated against in the name of the war against terrorism.

Tariq Ramadan

#62. Thru the auspices of the viewers who become - I think this is an import - in a democracy, become a working unit with law enforcement against the criminals.

Robert Stack

#63. By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature ...

Adolf Hitler

#64. To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of government.

Theodore Roosevelt

#65. How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?

Bill Moyers

#66. Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action, not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies-hunger, misery, and despair.

Harry S. Truman

#67. Whether people care enough about local news to pay for it is, sadly, an entirely different question than whether our democracy requires a strong watchdog function at the local level to ensure safeguards against abuse, chicanery, and outright dishonesty.

Eric Alterman

#68. To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.

Thurgood Marshall

#69. Capitalism is against the things that we say we believe in - democracy, freedom of choice, fairness. It's not about any of those things now. It's about protecting the wealthy and legalizing greed.

Michael Moore

#70. Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise.

Henry A. Wallace

#71. The world is threatened by terrorism and violent extremism like never before. The rule of law is one of our chief defences against terrorism. Our shared values of freedom and democracy are shielded when like-minded nations work together to promote justice.

Peter MacKay

#72. We need to stay in Iraq until the job is done. The President understands this and I'm glad that he is getting more countries to participate. We must change the chant of millions of young Muslims from 'Jihad Against the World' to 'Freedom and Democracy.'

George Voinovich

#73. In almost every successful social movement of the last century, from Gandhi's campaign against British rule to the Solidarity movement in Poland to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, democracy was the result of a local awakening.

Barack Obama

#74. A legitimate democracy cannot act against a terror organization because it is using civilians as a human shield, and therefore it should absorb attacks on its own civilians.

Benjamin Netanyahu

#75. The Palestinians are a despotic, undemocratic grouping which promotes a religious war against Israel, a democracy, through terror.

Melanie Phillips

#76. A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

H.L. Mencken

#77. Before Katrina, you didn't see criticism of the Bush administration in the media. Here they are, stealing elections, enacting illegal wars, huge crimes against humanity and democracy, and you didn't even see criticism. It wasn't until Katrina that people started to come down on them.

Ani DiFranco

#78. Democracy was a terrifying concept for the old world of Europe, and even the new world of North America, where income inequality was rife. The finest minds of the nineteenth century warned against giving the vote to the workingman, for fear of mob rule or the tyranny of the majority.

George Megalogenis

#79. The danger of having the Constitution twisted and misconstrued to support vested interests and prejudices must be guarded against if American democracy is to maintain a progressive character.

Helen Keller

#80. The DA is the only party in South Africa that has grown in every national election and that trend must continue, and it must accelerate, because South Africa is in a race against time to save our democracy.

Helen Zille

#81. While we use American power to fight hard for democracy against extremism on both left and right, our critics seem suspicious of any assertion of United States power or influence against any government or group that claims to be on the left.

Elliott Abrams

#82. In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

#83. There is a dualism inherent in democracy
opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy.

Libba Bray

#84. To Westerners, the students at Tiananmen may have given an impression of a solid and energetic consensus against dictatorship and for democracy, but they were an egotistical and fractious lot, riven by disagreements over tactics and money.

Pankaj Mishra

#85. Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

Immanuel Kant

#86. If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for ... but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.

Robert A. Heinlein