Top 100 Democracy Now Quotes
#1. When we define democracy now it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
Pearl S. Buck
#2. Mexico has proven by now that it's a strong electoral democracy. Now we have to build a democracy that produces better results; if not, then you get a democracy of disenchantment.
Enrique Pena Nieto
#3. If I knew how to operate a DVR, you'd find episodes of 'The Tavis Smiley Show,' 'Democracy Now!' and lots of stuff from TV Land. What you can find now on my Hulu account are Korean soap operas, 'Grey's Anatomy' and films from the Criterion collection.
T'Keyah Crystal Keymah
#4. I'm a huge fan of the program 'Democracy Now,' which is hosted by Amy Goodman, and I subscribe to the podcast.
Ellen Page
#5. Europeans used to be proud to be the advanced form of democracy. Now they're definitely a little bit ashamed because we are seeing that finally, the bond that we had, it was money.
Miguel Gomes
#6. There are a lot of great organizations who are fighting for food and environmental safety in this country. The Environmental Working Group, Just Label It, Food Democracy Now, and the Center for Food Safety, to name a few.
Zoe Lister-Jones
#7. I really wasn't very involved politically with anything up until that point. Then I started reading about the second Palestinian Intifada, and I spoke to friends in activist and journalism circles. Then, somehow by complete luck, I ended up at Democracy Now.
Sharif Abdel Kouddous
#9. Greece isn't a democracy now it's run through a troika - three foreign officials that fly into Athens airport and tell the Greeks what they can and can't do.
Nigel Farage
#10. We must fortify African democracy and peace by launching Radio Democracy for Africa, supporting the transition to democracy now beginning to take place in Nigeria.
William J. Clinton
#11. The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this.
Ron Paul
#12. If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.
Ray Bradbury
#13. The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!
Albert Einstein
#14. Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.
Noam Chomsky
#15. Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee ...
Howard Zinn
#17. 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
#18. There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.
Hillary Clinton
#19. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken
#20. The taste of democracy becomes a bitter taste when the fullness of democracy is denied.
Max Lerner
#21. Politicians tend only to like democracy when it is to their personal advantage
(From LONE WOLF, p.50)
Len Webster
#22. 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.
Dalton Trumbo
#23. 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
#24. Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.
Albert Camus
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. Socialism's not a word that I use. I say 'social democracy' because I don't think the government needs to own all the means of production.
David Cunliffe
#31. Those wanting to improve democracy in their countries should not wait for permission.
Bulent Ecevit
#32. For German Social Democracy, Europe is vital to the national interest.
Martin Schulz
#33. They [American forces] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
Henry A. Kissinger
#34. My primary motivation for running for the 9th Congressional District is that I strongly believe that one of the hallmarks of the American democracy is a representative form of democracy.
Willie Herenton
#35. We also call upon the king to hand over power to the political parties and for the political parties to shoulder their responsibility and turn the people's demands for democracy and good governance into reality.
Joseph Adam Ereli
#36. I realized that this was the big secret of democracy
that change can occur by starting off with just a few people doing something.
Michael Moore
#37. He saw during the Weimar Republic that the left intelligentsia hated capitalism, and hence social democracy as well, far too much to think that Nazism could be worse.
Clive James
#38. 137 years later, Memorial Day remains one of America's most cherished patriotic observances. The spirit of this day has not changed - it remains a day to honor those who died defending our freedom and democracy.
Doc Hastings
#39. 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
#40. For you I am neither the PM or CM. Our bond is a bond of affection and I am your sevak.
Narendra Modi
#41. Nobody should have the right to eavesdrop, or you become a totalitarian state - the kind of state I escaped as a kid to come to this country where you have democracy and freedom of speech.
Jan Koum
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. 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
#45. Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#46. Gobbledygook may indicate a failure to think clearly, a contempt for one's clients, or more probably a mixture of both. A system that can't or won't communicate is not a safe basis for a democracy.
Michael Shanks
#47. To protest against injustice is the foundation of all our American democracy.
Thurgood Marshall
#48. Don't fully trust anyone until he has stuck with a good cause which he saw was losing.
Morton Blackwell
#49. Generalization is flawed thinking only when applied to individuals. It is the most accurate way to describe the mass, the Wad. And yours is a democracy, a dictatorship of the Wad.
Trevanian
#50. 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
#51. What we have to do is to definitively remove the last vestiges of power from those who treat terms such as 'liberal democracy,' 'free markets' and 'Europe' with suspicion.
Donald Tusk
#52. 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
#53. A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
Noah Webster
#54. He can read and write, but he doesn't get what he's read. He's half-baked. The country is full of people like him, I'll tell you that. And we entrust our glourious parliamentary democracy
Aravind Adiga
#55. We have laid the foundation for a better life. Things that were unimaginable a few years ago have become everyday reality. I belong to the generation of leaders for whom the achievement of democracy was the defining challenge.
Nelson Mandela
#56. 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
#57. In a democracy only will the freeman of nature design to dwell.
Plato
#58. To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.
Jean Francois Revel
#59. 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
#60. There is a danger in democracy itself.
Danny Kaye
#61. 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
#62. There is something inherently wrong, something out of accord with the ideals of representative democracy, when one portion of our citizenship turns its activities to private gain amid defensive war while another is fighting, sacrificing, or dying for national preservation.
Warren G. Harding
#63. 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
#64. The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same.
Robert A. Heinlein
#65. 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
#66. Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.
Thomas Mann
#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. The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.
Herbert Hoover
#69. After all, how can a society flourish, a country attain democracy and health, children grow into intelligent beings, sensitive to the needs of an ever more fragile and endangered planet, if half it's people are kept out of the driver's seat?
Alice Walker
#70. The Sandinistas are dedicated Communists, and if they are going to make a compromise with democracy, it's going to be under pressure.
Elliott Abrams
#71. 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
#72. Democracy is not simply a question of structures. It is a state of mind. It is an activity. And part of that activity is honesty.
Rory Stewart
#73. The word 'radical' derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you must be radical. It is no accident that the word has now been totally demonized ...
Gore Vidal
#74. 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
#75. The nature of a democracy consists to an important degree in the right of the people to criticize problems and mistakes.
Walter Ulbricht
#76. 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
#77. Freedom, democracy, and socialism can only ever exist together; it is impossible to have any one without the other two.
Michel Templet
#78. An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democracy is good, and that our people deserve it.
Ahmet Davutoglu
#81. Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.
Al Gore
#82. Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.
H.L. Mencken
#83. We should not be surprised that democracy is imperfect even in Western countries.
Richard Holbrooke
#85. I don't know whether it's age or maturity, but I certainly find myself committed more and more to the looser forms of Western democracy at any price.
John Le Carre
#86. For the South African White minority, neo-liberalism is apartheid with a clean conscience, called Democracy.
Arundhati Roy
#87. 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
#88. Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.
David Korten
#89. 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
#91. If the government was as afraid of disturbing the consumer as it is of disturbing business, this would be some democracy.
Kin Hubbard
#92. A nation is truly corrupted when having ... lost its character and it's liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy. That is the decrepitude and death of the body politic ...
Maximilien De Robespierre
#93. At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.
Winston Churchill
#94. 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
#95. I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.
Ismail Haniyeh
#96. 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
#97. At least in a democracy we get to choose our own idiots. My
Geoff Hill
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. A graveyard is not normally a democracy, and yet death is the great democracy,
Neil Gaiman
