Top 88 Democracy Best Quotes
#1. As the leader of Southeast Asia's oldest democracy, I am always keen to share our experiences. In the half-century since independence, we have found that steady reform is the best way to secure lasting stability. It is a process that continues in Malaysia to this day.
Najib Razak
#2. Reagan never cottoned to dictators. He was pure in this notion in a true belief that democracy was the best solution in the world because it spoke to people's hopes and dreams and aspirations, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of speech.
Douglas Brinkley
#3. A constitutional state is like daily bread, like water to drink and air to breath, and the best thing about democracy is that it is the only system capable of securing the constitutional state.
Gustav Radbruch
#4. India is a democracy; it is in our DNA. As far as the different political parties are concerned, I firmly believe that they have the maturity and wisdom to make decisions that are in the best interests of the nation.
Narendra Modi
#5. The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Niels Bohr
#6. Similar to Churchill's view that "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried," although it is by no means a bulletproof theory, the CAPM is the best theory to explain the risk/return relationship that the greatest financial minds have been able to devise.
Matthew Krantz
#7. Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.
Lord Acton
#8. We want to remember that America is at its best when it's struggling to live up to its stated ideals.
Lonnie Bunch
#9. Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.
Winston Churchill
#10. The Fayyad cabinet may well be the best the Palestinians ever get. But whatever its good qualities, there is no democracy.
Elliott Abrams
#11. Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes.
Fisher Ames
#12. As the consumer is the public general, without distinction of rank or fortune, the free market is the most obvious expression of the sovereignty of the people and the best guarantee of democracy.
Faustino Ballve
#13. We have a democracy within the bounds of a constitution which provides certain guarantees related to the basic humanity of every person. I think that's the best way to go.
John Shelby Spong
#14. Tribal Chief 1: The will of the people is what is best. That is what democracy means
Tribal Chief 2: But if the people don't know what they are talking about, how can that be the best?
Leonard Wibberley
#15. At the best of times, democracy is a seesaw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion. You see, to make a democratic omelette you have to break a few democratic eggs. To fight fascism and other evil forces threatening our country, there is nothing wrong in taking strong measures.
Rohinton Mistry
#16. The world is always a democracy in times of flux, and the man with the best voice will win.
Orson Scott Card
#17. Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.
Pentti Linkola
#18. Democracy is, in essence, a form of non-violent conflict management. If war is the worst enemy of development, healthy and balanced development is the best form of conflict prevention.
Kofi Annan
#19. The best way to demonstrate the values of a western democracy is you put Osama bin Laden on trial; you challenge what he says.
Ken Livingstone
#20. If you want the best evidence of just how strong our democracy is, come into the courtroom.
Michael Ponsor
#21. Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.
Joseph Sobran
#22. If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.
Aristotle.
#23. In a democracy sovereignity is vested in a majority; and a majority is not only, at best, an ignorant, foolish and emotional mob, but shifts continually and alters from year to year.
Jean Bodin
#24. Our right to disagree is precious but fragile. The best way to protect and preserve it is to let the other side speak without demonizing them or destroying their right to be heard. Such civil exchanges are the heart beat of democracy - essential to keeping it alive.
Madeleine M. Kunin
#25. Science is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. It's just the best we have. In this respect, as in many others, it's like democracy. Science by itself cannot advocate courses of human action, but it can certainly illuminate the possible consequences of alternative courses of action.
Carl Sagan
#26. You know, real life doesn't just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it. Democracy, marriage, friendship. You can't just say, 'She's my best friend.' That's not a given, it's a process.
Viggo Mortensen
#27. The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston S. Churchill
#28. The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.
Jonah Goldberg
#29. Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.
Rick Perry
#30. I believe that American engagement, through our embassy, our businesses, and most of all through our people, is the best way to advance our interests and support for democracy and human rights.
Chris Christie
#31. The stakes are geopolitical in nature and I believe that democracies are - people want to live in free societies, democracies are the best way to do that, and that if people see democracies in the neighborhood, they'll demand the same thing.
George W. Bush
#32. We must consider not only why the classical theory of democracy appears to be in contradiction with the observed practice, but also why the many different responses to this observation, though mutually incompatible, all share the belief that democracy is the best form of political organization.
Moses Finley
#33. I see Edward Snowden as someone who has chosen, at best, exile from the country he loves-with a serious risk of his assassination by agents of his government or life in prison (in solitary confinement)-to awaken us to the danger of our loss of democracy to a total-surveilla nce state
Daniel Ellsberg
#34. The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.
Algernon Sidney
#35. The best measure of how a democracy is functioning is how it allocates the goods of the land, the public trust assets.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
#36. I prefer music where melody, harmony and rhythm come together and no one element overshadows the other. Jazz at its best is a democracy of creativity.
Jimmy Heath
#37. I was never convinced that war was the best system to bring democracy to the country.
Silvio Berlusconi
#38. The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.
Blaise Pascal
#39. We're learning lessons from Africa. And the lesson that we need to learn is, how do we straighten our backs up in the face of these oligarchs and plutocrats who are trying to snatch the best of our democracy away?
Cornel West
#40. Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies.
Moses Finley
#41. Just as an individual of pre-eminent worth transforms democracy into a monarchy of the best man, even so the rule of one man, if in all things it has an eye to the common welfare, is democracy.
Apollonius Of Tyana
#42. The best way to protect your own freedom is to watch everybody else's back. That's the essence of community.
Bode Miller
#43. Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best
Otto Von Bismarck
#44. I'm a patriot, and I think democracy is the best system available. It's very flawed, but it works better than anything else.
Jay Roach
#45. While a democratic process is morally desirable for arriving at a decision, it doesn't necessarily produce the best outcomes.
Pawan Mishra
#46. The Civil War was the climax of a tragedy that was preordained from the time of the Revolution. Only with the elimination of slavery could this nation that Jefferson had called "the world's best hope" for democracy even begin to fulfill its great promise.
Gordon S. Wood
#47. One of the central assumptions of the concept of democracy, perhaps its most central assumption, is that by and large human beings are better judges of their own interests ... The operating maxim of the democratic ideology is, Whoever wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.
Sidney Hook
#48. Unlike exotic fruit or fancy cars, democracy is best if it is grown locally. It may take root in the common desire of the people who choose to adopt it, but it cannot be imposed from the outside.
Anna Porter
#49. Democracy, though slowly attained and never by revolutionary jumps, is the best government on earth when it tries to make all its citizens aristocrats. But not when it guillontines whoever is individual, superior, or just different.
Peter Viereck
#50. The best defense against democracy is to distract people.
Noam Chomsky
#51. Hey, Wait a Minute!
The best way to control a people is to create
a fascist system of government
that goes through the motions of democracy.
Hey, wait a minute!
That's called America.
Beryl Dov
#53. A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.
Mark McKinnon
#54. Politicians that proclaim big words without meaning rule in democracy. At best they allow themselves to discover that it's better to be rich and healthy than sick and poor and that it is necessary to care for 'good of Poland - clap clap, hurricane of clapping.
Janusz Korwin-Mikke
#55. Back then, before it became clear that democracy was best served by a drunken electorate, the bars in New York City were required to close on Election Day.
Lawrence Block
#56. What we want to see is the development of human rights and greater democracy, not just because it is our system but because we think that's the best way that economic and political development go hand in hand.
Tony Blair
#57. I can't let my mother's death have been in vain. Democracy is the best revenge, and we will have it.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari
#58. A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people, but those of multinational corporations.
Suzy Kassem
#59. Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other.
William J. Clinton
#60. The politics of the family are the politics of a nation. Just as the authoritarian family is the authoritarian state in microcosm, the democratic family is the best training ground for life in a democracy.
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
#61. The future is best decided by ballots, not bullets.
Ronald Reagan
#62. Wouldn't it be more of a free country," persisted Francie "if we could ride in them free?" "No." "Why?" "Because that would be Socialism," concluded Johnny triumphantly, "and we don't want that over here." "Why?" "Because we got democracy and that's the best thing there is," clinched Johnny.
Betty Smith
#63. In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.
Carter G. Woodson
#64. Now the question is, now that we are there, what should we do in the best interest of the U.S., not only from a standpoint of the necessity of some stable democracy in the Middle East ...
Mike Huckabee
#65. Democracy is the best chance for the best people.
Robert Frost
#68. Faith in the power of reason - the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power - was and remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.
Al Gore
#69. I don't understand why it has to be either - or - either socialism or democracy. Why can't we combine things to get the best of each system?
Tim Allen
#70. Those who try to stifle the vibrancy of our democracy and shield policies from scrutiny behind a false cloak of patriotism miss the real value of what our troops defend and how we best defend our troops. We will ask questions and we will defend our democracy.
John F. Kerry
#71. The health of democracy, not its hate, is its best propaganda.
Judith C. Waller
#72. Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.
Benazir Bhutto
#73. The effect of a representative democracy is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation ...
James Madison
#75. To work best democracy needs a diversity of thoughts, ideas and expression. This is only possible with freedom and civility.
Kevin Stirtz
#76. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.
Colum McCann
#77. Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages. In a democracy it should be separated from the state just as churches are now separated from the state.
Paul Feyerabend
#79. Neoliberalism works best when there is formal electoral democracy, but when the population is diverted from the information, access, and public forums necessary for meaningful participation in decision making.
Noam Chomsky
#80. I'd still like to be the President, of course, and I think the best way to do that would be to raise an army and seize the Capital. This strikes me as true democracy.
Gore Vidal
#81. They'd done their best with democracy, with capitalism, but those had reached their limit long ago. They'd been corrupted, twisted to the interests of a few individuals, when the greatest problems the world faced were problems of collective interest.
Ramez Naam
#82. Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.
Robert A. Heinlein
#83. The hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#84. Although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly. And I think that that is what's best about Israeli democracy.
Barack Obama
#85. He talked about democracy and good citizenship and about a good world where everyone did the best he could for the common good of all.
Betty Smith
#86. Mr. Speaker, democracy works best when the American electorate is engaged and informed.
Melissa Bean
#87. Democracy is the best school to learn soft power.
Joseph Nye
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