Democracy In Quotes

#1. The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!

Albert Einstein

#2. I swear I will do everything in my power to change the situation in Tibet where human rights are being suppressed. Tibet seeks freedom and democracy and we agree on those values.

Shinzo Abe

#3. There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.

Hillary Clinton

#4. 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

#5. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it ... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'.

Robert A. Heinlein

#6. I think there is a heritage which I'm proud of, which is a fight for democracy, a fight for social justice, a fight for freedom. My grandfather went to jail or exile six times in his life, fighting for his principles for democracy, or for his country. And my father twice.

George Papandreou

#7. I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.

Alan Dershowitz

#8. In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root.

Paul Tsongas

#9. President Bush said it's now time for a change in Iraq and he wants them to have a Western-style democracy like ours. So right now in Iraq, the economy is collapsing, businessmen are corrupt, and Hussein wants his son to take over as president. Sounds like mission accomplished.

Jay Leno

#10. Those wanting to improve democracy in their countries should not wait for permission.

Bulent Ecevit

#11. All ponzi schemes are upheld by a centripetal force caused by those orbiting the circles of power, celebrity and wealth and trying to get in. When the ponzi scheme reaches its point of maximum growth, the force disperses and the ponzi scheme collapses.

Heather Marsh

#12. But you can live in the most democratic country on earth, and if you're lazy, obtuse or servile within yourself, you're not free.

Ignazio Silone

#13. 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

#14. We live in a democracy and I do not understand why highly respected scientists from top international branches are not able express themselves!

Nina Hagen

#15. We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden - a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

Dick Morris

#16. 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

#17. Democracy, obviously, is something we don't want to give up, but it does create chaos. It means the guy next door can do what he wants, and it creates a collision of thinking. In cities, that means people build whatever they want.

Frank Gehry

#18. In a democracy only will the freeman of nature design to dwell.

Plato

#19. As a veteran, I know firsthand the satisfaction there is in defending the democracy you so strongly believe in, but I can also attest to the trauma encountered from combat on the battlefield.

Charles B. Rangel

#20. There is a danger in democracy itself.

Danny Kaye

#21. In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Yanko Tsvetkov

#22. If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.
[Freedom of the Park, Tribune, 7 December 1945]

George Orwell

#23. We believe in equality for all, and privileges for none. This is a belief that each American regardless of background has equal standing in the public forum, all of us. Because we believe this idea so firmly, we are an inclusive, rather than an exclusive party. Let everybody come.

Barbara Jordan

#24. Well, 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 Boggs

#25. The nature of a democracy consists to an important degree in the right of the people to criticize problems and mistakes.

Walter Ulbricht

#26. However, I must say that I am very happy to see that we have such a positive result for our first referendum in our history and that gives me more confidence in Taiwan's democracy.

Chen Shui-bian

#27. We should not be surprised that democracy is imperfect even in Western countries.

Richard Holbrooke

#28. Democracy is fine in politics. It should stay there, and we need more of it. But its political virture is no reason to practice it in the garden.

Allen Lacy

#29. When you look at - when you talk to people in Africa and across the Middle East, they're not satisfied with the way things are going. Sure, this idea of democracy was injected into the region, but it has brought mostly chaos.

Richard Engel

#30. The happiest thing that can be said about democracy ... is that it is one of the few systems that has been willing to risk a long period of confusion and mixed purposes for the sake of giving man a chance to grow up in mind and responsibility.

Harry Allen Overstreet

#31. Not only the people of Nepal but also those who believe in the power of democracy are looking at Nepal and this assembly.

Narendra Modi

#32. At least in a democracy we get to choose our own idiots. My

Geoff Hill

#33. In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.

Robert Caro

#34. 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

#35. The critical question is: How do we ensure that the Internet develops in a way that is compatible with democracy?

Rebecca MacKinnon

#36. Democracy cannot function or survive without a sufficient medium by which citizens remain informed and engaged in public policy debates.

Nancy Snow

#37. 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

#38. As the leader of the nation, I say in behalf of the Filipino people to the world: we are strong and principled believers in democracy.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

#39. That does not mean we won't experience the tragedy of the loss of some American lives. We will have an opportunity to instill a democracy in Iraq which will be an example and perhaps force other nations in that region to move in the same direction.

John McCain

#40. Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual should have an equal vote, an equal say, in the formation of their government.

Rory Stewart

#41. My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm-as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.

Camille Paglia

#42. We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation.

Joichi Ito

#43. I have - I have more than an interesting task in piloting Wales into our new democracy, without wanting to exercise draconian powers on behalf of anybody else - I can assure of that.

Ron Davies

#44. American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.

Russell Simmons

#45. What you discover in a democracy is that it is difficult to build a house when each nail has an opinion.

Robert Breault

#46. Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin?

Jacques Barzun

#47. Campaign may invite a certain skepticism about democracy, but it will surely restore your faith in cinema verite.

A.O. Scott

#48. While Kuwait is not a democracy, giving only half the population a voice in their government is not a policy this Congress should support and one that I am glad that Kuwait's leaders are changing.

Ginny Brown-Waite

#49. You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

#50. As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.

Naguib Mahfouz

#51. Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

Alan Blinder

#52. A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.

Fisher Ames

#53. The idea that each corporation can be a feudal monarchy and yet behave in its corporate action like a democratic citizen concerned for the world we live in is one of the great absurdities of our time -

Kim Stanley Robinson

#54. It is, the most beautiful truth in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or divided interest from our race. In their welfare is ours, and by choosing the broadest paths to effect their happiness we choose the surest and the shortest to our own.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

#55. Campaigns and elections are the process in which democracy separates the willing from the able, and goes with the willing.

Jon Stewart

#56. A generation of Earth Days has conditioned millions of us to be green in our homes yet we must apply the same ethic to our politics if we want to save our planet and our democracy.

Christine Pelosi

#57. Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.

Karen Armstrong

#58. We want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East is the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abdallah II Of Jordan

#59. May it please your Majesty I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here.

William Lenthall

#60. Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.

Nelson Mandela

#61. That's what separates out American democracy from dictators and horrible governments across the world and the reason why that works is that we have a president that can consult with congress before making big decisions. That doesn't just make a unilateral decision to go in for military conflict.

Charles R. Chamberlain

#62. American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

#63. There are many democracies in our Arab and Islamic countries, but unfortunately, they are all false democracies.

Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

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

Bill Moyers

#65. I am not alone in thinking that we are at a tipping point ecologically and morally and politically. Democracy cannot survive without a vibrant middle class, yet the policies of one of the parties has been committed to wiping it out for 30 years.

Deborah Kass

#66. I hope that with the success of the transition to democracy in Tunisia that we will export to Egypt a working democratic model.

Rashid Al-Ghannushi

#67. The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.

Steven Van Zandt

#68. 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

#69. Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found it gratifying. It was a joy to have an opportunity to say what you believed. It's challenging to do it in fiction, but I liked writing the novels. I liked writing 'Democracy' particularly.

Joan Didion

#70. We have a natural constant craving for leadership. Democracy is always a fragile and imperfect achievement. Yet a distinct feeling of malaise in our political culture lingers. There is something missing from our public debates.

Tim Soutphommasane

#71. In a jungle full of totalitarian monsters liberal democracy needs teeth.

Robert Conquest

#72. Belief in liberal freedom and democracy is always belief in it in a particular place, in a national home with histories that only those who are born in a place or who adopt its citizenship can hope to understand.

Michael Ignatieff

#73. There is a heated debate in Turkey these days over whether the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is furthering democracy or rolling it back.

Mustafa Akyol

#74. Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation ofall men into a few men.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#75. Its [Dreams from My Father] also a reflection about how we might start a better conversation in our democracy about how to solve problems, because it feels as if our political system - it just seems there is so much cynicism and negativity in our politics.

Barack Obama

#76. Those who deplore our militants, who exhort patience in the name of a false peace, are in fact supporting segregation and exploitation. They would have social peace at the expense of social and racial justice. They are more concerned with easing racial tension than enforcing racial democracy.

A. Philip Randolph

#77. We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning
of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party's policy.

Nicolae Ceausescu

#78. The function of a newspaper in a democracy is to stand as a sort of chronic opposition to the reigning quacks. The minute it begins to out-whoop them it forfeits its character and becomes ridiculous.

H.L. Mencken

#79. The East knew and to the present day knows only that One is Free; the Greek and the Roman world, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History, is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third, Monarchy.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

#80. 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

#81. We're at a point in history that whether the Internet is going to evolve in a way that's compatible with democracy and human rights is really kind of up in the air.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#82. Many people are alienated by faceless bureaucracy and what they see as an erosion of participatory democracy. Consequently, there has been a revival of interest in charitable service.

Frank Prochaska

#83. If you live in a democracy and don't have freedom of information, it's not a democracy. And people have to understand that if you don't have freedom of information online, it's not going to be offline, either.

Birgitta Jonsdottir

#84. 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

#85. We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world's preeminent democracy, after all, if the large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.

Barbara Ehrenreich

#86. The beliefs expressed in the Declaration of Independence remain a standard for our nation today. They also remain a standard for those nations across the globe striving to achieve democracy.

Paul Gillmor

#87. I wanted to get far away from those who believed in cruelty, so then I went to France, a land of true freedom, democracy, equality and fraternity.

Josephine Baker

#88. Putting it in plain terms, the general public must be reduced to its traditional apathy and obedience, and driven from the arena of political debate and action, if democracy is to survive.

Noam Chomsky

#89. People 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 Zuma

#90. What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position.

Stokely Carmichael

#91. Journalism still, in a democracy, is the essential force to get the public educated and mobilized to take action on behalf of our ancient ideals.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

#92. The importance of the ordinary citizen is very greatly underestimated - not so much by those in authority as by the ordinary citizen himself.

Jan Struther

#93. The faith in reason insists that the poverty of democracy offers a greater hope for mankind than the prosperity that attaches itself to aristocracy or despotism.

Bill Vaughan

#94. 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

#95. 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

#96. The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany.

George W. Bush

#97. Do go on,' he said. 'There's nothing I enjoy more than listening to a highly trained intelligence leapfrogging common sense and coming to the wrong conclusions. It gives me renewed faith in parliamentary democracy.

Tom Sharpe

#98. When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.

J. William Fulbright

#99. My favorite forgotten President in American history is James Buchanan, who in defending really robust and sharp-elbowed debates said, "I like the noise of democracy. I like the sound of people in the streets making noise."

Jeff Sharlet

#100. A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer