Top 100 Democracy's Quotes
#1. Politics is democracy's way of handling public business. We won't get the type of country in the kind of world we want unless people take part in the public's business.
David R. Brower
#2. I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.
Langston Hughes
#3. Our democracy's history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate - people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list,
Gabrielle Giffords
#4. I am most deeply concerned over a trend toward conformity, a growth of anti-intellectualism, which manifests itself in a sneering attitude toward education, science, and the arts. The tendency is to stifle mental freedom, which is the very basis of a democracy's life and growth.
Anais Nin
#5. To make ourselves invisible to creditors or to the envious, and even to our own worries, we can take advantage here on earth of a great democratic institution-in fact, democracy's only success-the night.
Jean Giraudoux
#6. It is an incredibly hopeful experience watching communities come together and actually reassemble democracy. The democracy's been taken away from us. But they're reinventing democracy out there in rural Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, in Pittsburgh.
Josh Fox
#7. Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.
Sam Shepard
#8. Democracy's a farce, Ronan said, and Adam smirked, a private, small thing that was inherently exclusionary. An expression, in fact, that he could've very well learned from Ronan.
Maggie Stiefvater
#10. You mean, the people are armed?" Prince Bentrik was incredulous.
"Great Satan, aren't yours?" Prince Trask was equally surprised. "Then your democracy's a farce, and the people are only free on sufferance. If their ballots aren't secured by arms, they're worthless.
H. Beam Piper
#11. Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.
Robert A. Heinlein
#12. Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.
Wendy Kaminer
#13. Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.
David K. Shipler
#14. Democracy's real test lies in its respect for minority opinion.
Ellery Sedgwick
#16. I think democracy's undermined when those who own newspapers fill them with trivia rather than real issues.
Ken Livingstone
#17. Democracy's ceremonial, its feast, it's great function, is the election.
H.G.Wells
#18. The Internet is democracy's revenge on democracy.
Molly Haskell
#19. Rebellion without reprisal is one of democracy's perks, right?
Laura Kelly
#20. If the war has faded into history, democracy's defeat in Vietnam has left deep marks in the consciousness of both nations.
Nguyen Cao Ky
#21. 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
#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. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. When we define democracy now it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
Pearl S. Buck
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same.
Robert A. Heinlein
#32. The Constitution is America's glue, Democracy is the Constitution's glue.
Herbert Hoover
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#38. 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
#39. 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
#40. 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
#41. We'll build a democracy here, even if it's with Nazi bricks.
Samuel Fuller
#42. 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
#43. I'm worried about people who say Bush is lying. It's much more frightening that he's not lying, that he believes what he believes: that it's his mission to change the Middle East into a democracy. That's more unnerving.
Seymour Hersh
#44. I think it's hard to learn democracy when we make children prisoners until they're nineteen years old.
Mimsy Sadofsky
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he's referring to.
Angela Davis
#48. It's actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
Brian Eno
#49. political life came to be dominated by a pattern of interest-group politics that the era's political scientists came to call "pluralist," a form of democracy marked more by competition among organizations and lobbyists than by a sense of the public interest.
Ira Katznelson
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. 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
#56. 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
#57. 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
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#61. All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.
Benjamin Haydon
#62. The Roman Empire, born out the Roman Republic, with its ideas of democracy among a certain group of wealthy men (no vote for men without land -as with our Founding Fathers- and certainly no vote for women and slaves. Why are democracies built on top of one form of slavery or another?)
Tina Packer
#63. Here's to the day when the complete works of Leon Trotsky are published and widely distributed in the Soviet Union. On that day the USSR will have achieved democracy!
C. Wright Mills
#64. There should be a democracy of voices in literature. There are people who live with a kind of striving and with a certain kind of tenderness - it's not an unusual thing - and maybe that's not written about enough.
Anne Michaels
#65. People will never get in touch with democracy. It's always surrounded by bodyguards.
Ljupka Cvetanova
#66. I am furious at the way that we have allowed money to subvert our democracy. I am appalled at the way that the U.S., a very wealthy nation, permits and even encourages a level of poverty that other wealthy nations would not even consider.
Alex Gibney
#67. It's true that General Musharraf opposes my return, seeing me as a symbol of democracy in the country. He is comfortable with dictatorship. I hope better sense prevails.
Benazir Bhutto
#68. A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.
Jose Marti
#69. The political restructuring we pursue in China is aimed at advancing the self-improvement and development of the socialist political system. We will continue to expand people's democracy and build a socialist country under the rule of law in keeping with China's national conditions.
Hu Jintao
#70. 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
#71. Hong Kong is not just a global financial center. It's also a place with a lot of teens and youth who love freedom, democracy, and human rights.
Joshua Wong
#72. Today's business model is bad for people, bad for the economy and bad for stability and democracy,
Sharan Burrow
#73. Pakistan's future viability, stability and security lie in empowering its people and building political institutions. My goal is to prove that the fundamental battle for the hearts and minds of a generation can be accomplished only under democracy.
Benazir Bhutto
#74. 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
#75. The core threat to democracy is not in the White House, it's the [Bush] haters themselves.
David Brooks
#76. The reason that Google was such a success is because they were the first ones to take advantage of the self-organizing properties of the web. It's in ecological sustainability. It's in the developmental power of entrepreneurship, the ethical power of democracy.
Ron Eglash
#77. I tell you, in my opinion, the cornerstone of democracy is free press - that's the cornerstone.
Milos Forman
#78. There are two clocks ticking in Iran. One is the democracy movement clock which is ticking now faster than it was but it's got a lot of catching up to do. And then there's the clock that's ticking towards a nuclear weaponry.
Christopher Hitchens
#79. Ethics must be reintroduced to public service to restore people's faith in government. Without such faith, democracy cannot flourish. Your ambitious agenda is filling a desperate need.
Walter Cronkite
#80. Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's favour has been withdrawn.
Aldous Huxley
#81. When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
Edward Snowden
#82. 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
#83. [A]s long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if meaningful.
Noam Chomsky
#84. You know, this idea of going around the world imposing democracy by growing a middle-class, a trading merchant class that is independent of your faith, is a good notion, but we're all partially different - it's no good imposing systems on people that it doesn't suit.
Damian Lewis
#85. The Internet has brought democracy to so many other things. It's about time the Internet brought democracy to democracy.
Joe Green
#86. All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.
Hunter S. Thompson
#87. We need a government which, yes, guarantees basic standards in public services, but which also steps in to protect people's wellbeing as they take part in our consumer democracy - particularly online.
David Blunkett
#88. There's something magical that happens when people eat from the same pot. The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It's where we learn to share; it's where we learn to argue without offending. It's just too critical to let go, as we've been so blithely doing.
Michael Pollan
#89. Ultimately, I believe - because energy is so central to our lives - that a common global project to rewire the world with clean energy could be the first step on a path to global peace and global democracy - even in today's deeply troubled world.
Ross Gelbspan
#90. If we dwell in a community that is comfortable, then it's probably not broad enough a coalition.
Bernice Johnson Reagon
#91. That's what this democracy was for us, a huge supermarket of mass man where we could take a piece here and a piece there to make our personalities for ourselves instead of putting up with what was given at the beginning.
Seymour Krim
#92. For no country is a true democracy whose women have not an equal share in life with men, and until we realize this we shall never achieve a real democracy on this earth.
Pearl S. Buck
#93. See, whoever said I was an autocrat was clearly mistaken. I represented the height of representative democracy where everyone gets a vote. Mine just counted for more than all the other ones combined, when you read the final tally; that's all.
Luke Sky Wachter
#94. The media does play a vital role in our democracy, and if we cannot depend on journalistic ethics, the nation's in trouble.
Dave Brat
#95. People are even more wary of politicians and they are realizing that democracy isn't just about putting a cross on a ballot every four years, it's about deciding what you want and fighting for it.
Mark Thomas
#96. There is one solution to all of our problems: Teaching our kids clarity of thought and political representation in democracy. That's it.
Richard Dreyfuss
#97. Swedish democracy is based on a single premise: the Right to Free Speech (R.F.S.).
Stieg Larsson
#98. Democracy can't work. Mathematicians, peasants, and animals, that's all there is
so democracy, a theory based on the assumption that mathematicians and peasants are equal, can never work. Wisdom is not additive; its maximum is that of the wisest man in a given group.
Robert A. Heinlein
#99. We talk about democracy as if it's a safeguard for individual rights ... Instead, it's become our way of intruding on rights, allegedly in the name of that most collectivist of concepts: The Common Good.
Jonathan D. Morris
#100. Voting in particular is an embarrassment, being a public display of weak character and low intelligence. Let us face the truth: Democracy, like spitting in public or the Roman games, is the proper activity of the lower intellectual and moral classes. It amounts to collusion in one's own suckering.
Fred Reed
