Top 100 America Democracy Quotes
#1. Europe tends to favor stability over democracy, America democracy over stability.
Daniel Hannan
#2. Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.
Cornel West
#3. Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#4. Because America, being a democracy, could not strike first, but had to wait - wait in instant readiness - until she was actually attacked.
E.E. "Doc" Smith
#5. The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.
Thomas Piketty
#6. The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.
Herbert Hoover
#7. TO FOREIGN LANDS. I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.
Walt Whitman
#8. Everybody in America has been dependent on the government at some time. We owe everybody in America the right to vote and access to capital. What I say is, let's make America work, let's make democracy and free enterprise work for everybody.
Andrew Young
#9. We in the United States are very often - since we are a democracy and we have national interests, we've often made the mistake that a democracy has to adopt America's interests, and that is a contradiction because a democracy basically is people deciding what their interests are.
George Soros
#10. Events in America show the extent to which democracy there is fuelled by populism - Barack Obama's victory is a manifestation not of Washington's need for change, but of America's. That is not how democracy works in England.
Andrew O'Hagan
#11. I think it is very important for any U.S. administration to be clear that America stands on the side of freedom and democracy and respect for individual rights.
Stephen Hadley
#12. China is trying to become America without democracy while America is trying to become France without cheese calories.
P. J. O'Rourke
#13. We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.
Alice Paul
#14. A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
Bill Vaughan
#15. Because of my parents' love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia - first by Hitler and then by Stalin.
Madeleine Albright
#16. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy
Martin Luther King Jr.
#17. Most people that I know don believe that a handful of corporations request sit together without disclosure, by the way, and pump hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process. That is not the democracy that many of us believe America should be.
Bernie Sanders
#18. To me, elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no-one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist.
Florence King
#19. America's most dangerous and threatening black man is the one who has been kept sealed up by the Northerner in the black ghettos - the Northern white power structure's system to keep talking democracy while keeping the black man out of sight somewhere, around the corner.
Malcolm X
#20. If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not under siege, freedom is not at risk.
Gary Ackerman
#21. Democracy ... is a society in which the unbeliever feels undisturbed and at home. If there were only a half dozen unbelievers in America, their well-being would be a test of our democracy.
Alfred North Whitehead
#22. Is America truly a democracy? Has America ever been a democracy with the institution of slavery?
Tatyana Ali
#23. The United States stands at the pinnacle of world power. This is a solemn moment for the American democracy. For with primacy in power is joined an awe-inspiring accountability for the future.
Winston Churchill
#24. A free America ... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.
Frank Lloyd Wright
#25. Democracy
rule by the people
sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America.
Edward Abbey
#26. We can't slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#27. In reality, at the end of World War II, America imposed democracy at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany, and it has proved a resounding success in both countries. The problem with liberals is that they never give bayonets a chance.
Dinesh D'Souza
#28. Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]
Noam Chomsky
#30. My parents called themselves progressives. The agenda was a Soviet America ... the slogan of the communist party in those days was peace, jobs, democracy. Sound familar? The communist party is the democratic Party.
David Horowitz
#31. America's objective in the Middle East is to create democracy in the same way that my goal on a first date to feed women.
Dov Davidoff
#32. Abortion on demand, throughout the full nine months of a pregnancy, for virtually any reason, became public policy in the United States of America. No other developed democracy had, or has, such a permissive abortion regime.
Robert Casey
#33. Without enough wilderness America will change. Democracy, with its myriad personalities and increasing sophistication, must be fibred and vitalized by regular contact with outdoor growths - animals, trees, sun warmth and free skies - or it will dwindle and pale.
Walt Whitman
#34. Jazz is America's own. It is played and listened to by all peoples - in harmony together. Pigmentation differences have no place ... as in genuine democracy, only performance counts.
Norman Granz
#35. America's greatness rests on far more than the power of our arms. Our greatness is also measured by our goodness, it's in the capacity of our minds, of our hearts, and it's in the strength of our democracy.
Howard Dean
#36. It don't take a weather man to look around and see the weather, Jeb said he'd deliver Florida folks and boy did he ever, and we hold these truths to be self evident number one George W Bush is not president. Number two America isn't a true democracy. And number three the media is not fooling me.
Ani DiFranco
#37. The governments and the hard-headed military establishment and the general conservative part of America have never taken much interest in democracy, anyway.
Amartya Sen
#38. Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.
Henry Rollins
#39. The building of America has had its fair share of mistakes, but it's a constitution that's the jewel of democracy, the envy of many, and it's the most generous nation in the world.
Gary Oldman
#40. There is something inherent in our democracy that tends to want to level. America is a little uncomfortable in the presence of someone who is distinctly superior in whatever way.
Carlisle Floyd
#41. President Reagan fueled the spirit of America. His smile, his optimism, his total belief in the ultimate triumph of democracy and freedom, and his willingness to act on that belief, helped end the Cold War and usher in a new and brighter phase of history.
Colin Powell
#42. America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.
Orson Scott Card
#43. America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word "We." "We The People." "We Shall Overcome." "Yes We Can." That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.
Barack Obama
#44. Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That's why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.
Barack Obama
#45. Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I'll be right there with you as a citizen - inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.
Barack Obama
#46. Will Iraq be a democracy? The question is, 'Will America be a democracy?'
Howard Zinn
#47. Tocqueville remarks on this in Democracy in America. "An American," he wrote, "cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation.
Neil Postman
#48. Ours was the first nation to be founded on the idea that all are created equal and all deserve equal treatment under the law. Despite our missteps and shortcomings, these ideals still inspire hope among the oppressed and give us pride in being Americans.
Jimmy Carter
#49. America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#50. It's an ancient idea that the leader of a democracy should not be the cleverest but the most average. That's an arguable point, but the world has decided otherwise - except in America, where it still divides the country right down the middle.
Martin Amis
#51. We seek in Central America not peace alone, not peace to be followed someday by political progress, but peace and democracy, together, indivisible, an end to the shedding of human blood, which is inseparable from an end to the suppression of human rights.
Oscar Arias
#52. My parents were lured to America by the democracy here promised. In our family, freedom was a word to conjure by. Hoping for larger privileges for the growing family of children, they brought them to the New World, the world of many intellectual as well as material advantages.
Jenkin Lloyd Jones
#53. Eighty years ago, Woodrow Wilson took America into the twentieth century with a challenge to make the world safe for democracy. As we enter the twenty-first century, our task is to make democracy safe for the world.
Fareed Zakaria
#54. 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
#55. No. What would I look like fighting for equality with the white man? I don't want to go down that low. I want the true democracy that'll raise me and that white man up raise America up.
Fannie Lou Hamer
#56. Devoid of any real liberty or justice, America and her children had fallen prey to what amounted to little more than a thinly veiled dictatorship. She now represented not the proud citadel of freedom, but the failed experiment of democracy.
Eric J. Martindale
#57. We have bloated bureaucracies in Corporate America. The root of the problem is the absence of real corporate democracy.
Carl Icahn
#58. The 'corporatization of America' during the past century [has been] an attack on democracy.
Noam Chomsky
#59. And when they do spin out of control there are important ramifications that affect America, not just its direct national interest but its broader interests as a nation which has thought of itself as a beacon to other nations, of freedom, liberty, democracy, whatever.
John Pomfret
#60. Change represents the real spirit of democracy and the real America.
Bryant McGill
#61. The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.
James McGreevey
#62. We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America.
Emma Goldman
#63. America is not just a democracy, it represents a certain culture of competitive mobility and personality aspirations, politics is not merely a clash of interests, but a clash of dreams.
David Brooks
#64. American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.
William J. Clinton
#65. The United States exists as a sovereign nation. 'America,' in contrast, exists as a myth of democracy and equal opportunity to live by, or as an ideal goal to reach.
Bharati Mukherjee
#66. China has no choice but to emulate the power of America's founding ideas and its journey through the universal values of democratic freedom and individual rights.
Patrick Mendis
#67. Josh: So, Toby, it's election night. What do you say about a country that goes out of its way to protect even those citizens that try to destroy it?
Toby: God bless America.
Aaron Sorkin
#68. America had the message of freedom and democracy, but we haven't actually shown that to be what we do in the world. So I think that's a terrifying thing.
Lesli Linka Glatter
#69. America's corporate and political elites
now form a regime of their own and
they're privatizing democracy. All the
benefits - the tax cuts, policies and
rewards flow in one direction: up.
Bill Moyers
#70. America is stronger than ever. We will forever remember those we lost on September 11, 2001. In honoring their memory, we will remain true to our commitment to freedom and democracy.
Evan Bayh
#71. America has value-based leadership. America is valued - America is followed by other nations, including my own nation, because it's based on the values that America has to offer to the rest of the world - freedom, freedom of choice, democracy, open market.
Mikhail Saakashvili
#72. Democracy is not an incident that happens overnight, nor a gift that America can give to the world. It is a culture which needs peace to evolve.
Shirin Ebadi
#73. Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.
Thomas Paine
#74. 'Duck Dynasty' is a ridiculous show, and long may it wave. America and democracy will endure. They've seen a lot worse.
Henry Rollins
#75. I look forward to an america in which commands respect throughout the world, not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world in which we will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.
John F. Kennedy
#76. Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."
Gore Vidal
#77. I grew up in San Francisco. And so I'm informed in a certain kind of way about, you know, believing in democracy and believing in America. And I'm a very ardent patriot.
George Lucas
#78. America cannot do most of what needs to be done alone. You need friends. And we have good friends around the world. We have friends with whom we share values in Europe and Asia - thanks to the forward march of democracy - in Latin America, in Africa, and increasingly in the Middle East.
Condoleezza Rice
#79. On December 7, 1941, an event took place that had nothing to do with me or my family and yet which had devastating consequences for all of us - Japan bombed Pearl Harbour in a surprise attack. With that event began one of the shoddiest chapters in the tortuous history of democracy in North America.
David Suzuki
#80. America operates under the notion of equality before the law. Basic fairness is an article of faith. We may not agree on everything all of the time, but we select our leaders together. And when we don't want them anymore, we get rid of them.
Keith Ellison
#81. America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.
Jimmy Carter
#82. It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.
Natan Sharansky
#83. 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
#84. We have been gradually finding out that there is more democracy in letting a committee or representative ten to details than in making everybody's business nobody's business.
Edward Pearson Pressey
#85. Made no mistake: America is a Christian nation. The bedrock of our theo-democracy is our Judeo-Christian values. that term, by the way, is a bit of a misnomer. It implies that Christianity and Judaism are equal.
Stephen Colbert
#86. Israel has no better friend that America. And America has not better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism.
Benjamin Netanyahu
#87. I think we are dying in America, I think our democracy is over.
Rickie Lee Jones
#88. What is music in America? It's this stand-in for political action in a lot of senses. We have no democracy and we have no art culture, and we've long considered politics nebbish-y and hopelessly unsexy. So a lot of what would be considered political activism is channeled into cultural work.
Ian Svenonius
#89. Through much of the last century, America's faith in freedom and democracy was a rock in a raging sea. Now it is a seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations.
George W. Bush
#90. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Latin America moved decisively away from military rule and toward civilian democracy.
Stephen Kinzer
#91. The people who lead us are of us. We put them in office and we can take them out. America proves that the people can govern themselves.
Keith Ellison
#92. Before the military coup in Chile, we had the idea that military coups happen in Banana Republics, somewhere in Central America. It would never happen in Chile. Chile was such a solid democracy. And when it happened, it had brutal characteristics.
Isabel Allende
#93. When the safety of America is threatened, we will spend any amount of money. The real safety of our nation is preparing this next generation so that they can take our place [in] thinking and technology and democracy.
Geoffrey Canada
#94. America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism.
Mark Levin
#95. New Englanders began the Revolution not to institute reforms and changes in the order of things, but to save the institutions and customs that already had become old and venerable with them; and were new only to a few stupid Englishmen a hundred and fifty years behind the times.
Edward Pearson Pressey
#96. They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.
Howard Zinn
#97. I had this fantasy that in a democracy the government was the population. So I came to America and got a big slap in my face ... Americans were not what I thought. I thought I was going to see bastards and I saw nice people, very friendly to me.
Marjane Satrapi
#98. What I hear every day on talk radio is America's lack of education - and I don't mean lack of college degrees. I mean lack of the basic art of democracy, the ability to seek the great truths that can come only by synthesizing the small truths possessed by each of us.
Donella Meadows
#99. From leading the world into the age of democracy to spearheading the technological revolution, America has always been at the forefront of greatness.
Charles B. Rangel
#100. All across the Middle East in the streets, people are demanding democracy. It's amazing. The only way in America you get people to get worked up like that is to threaten to give them health care.
Bill Maher
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
