Democratic Rights Quotes

#1. People have the right to protest - that's what democracy is all about. I have no problem with people exercising their democratic rights.

Condoleezza Rice

#2. Democracy is the common pursuit of mankind, and all countries must earnestly protect the democratic rights of the people.

Jinato Hu

#3. Earlier in the twentieth century some critics called fascism "capitalism with the gloves off," meaning that fascism was pure capitalism without democratic rights and organizations.

Noam Chomsky

#4. Being born in Cuba, a country where freedom of speech is non-existent, it's startling to observe how Venezuela, where I was happily raised, is fast becoming Cuba's mirror image: Dismantling of fundamental democratic rights deserved by its people and citizens of the world.

Maria Conchita Alonso

#5. Popular privileges are consistent with a state of society in which there is great inequality of position. Democratic rights, on the contrary, demand that there should be equality of condition as the fundamental basis of the society they regulate.

Benjamin Disraeli

#6. In the West, people pride themselves on being the defenders of democratic rights and the champions of freedom. But if the Western world really cares for the benevolence of the whole world, it will have to turn to introspection.

Nirmala Srivastava

#7. Within the last thirty years, the United States under the reign of market fundamentalism has been transformed into a society that is more about forgetting than learning, more about consuming than producing, more about asserting private interests than democratic rights.

Henry A. Giroux

#8. Can a democratic nation fight a War on Terror and at the same time bend over backward so as not to offend a few visitors' rights?

Annie Jacobsen

#9. EMILY's List members are deeply committed to electing pro-choice Democratic women whom we trust to stand up for our rights, treat us honestly, and make us proud. Our candidates fight for us every day. Blanche Lincoln failed to hold up her end of the bargain.

Ellen Malcolm

#10. . . The Democratic Party puts human rights and human welfare first. . . . These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men. . . . They want a return of the Wall Street economic dictatorship. .

David McCullough

#11. I feel very strongly that the Democratic Party has, in the past, been the party of the future. I think when you look at Social Security and Medicare, when you look at the civil rights movement, the women's movement, I think the Democratic Party has always been in the forefront of change.

Richard Lamm

#12. Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.

Armstrong Williams

#13. 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

#14. The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.

Jacques Maritain

#15. A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.

A. Philip Randolph

#16. The Republican Party supported the Equal Rights Amendment before the Democratic Party did. But what happened was that a lot of very right-wing Democrats, after the civil rights bill of 1964, left the Democratic Party and gradually have taken over the Republican Party.

Gloria Steinem

#17. The respect for human rights is one of the most significant advantages of a free and democratic nation in the peaceful struggle for influence, and we should use this good weapon as effectively as possible.

Jimmy Carter

#18. Even in South Carolina, as badly as we did, and we did very badly, we won the votes of people 29 years of age or younger. The future of the Democratic Party, the future of this country is involving young people in the political process, getting them to stand up for their rights.

Bernie Sanders

#19. There's a wider agenda that speaks to what the Democratic Party has historically stood for, which are economic rights for those who are struggling in the middle class, concern for the poor, for economic justice for those who are marginalized in our society.

Mike McCurry

#20. We must not allow the practices of an anti-democratic State that abuses the powers of government to violate the human rights of Venezuelans.

Leopoldo Lopez

#21. The U.S.-led western alliance, while acting as an advocate of democracy, rule of law and human rights, is acting from the opposite position, rejecting the democratic principle of the sovereign right of states enshrined in the U.N. Charter and trying to decide for others what is good and what is bad.

Sergei Lavrov

#22. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.

Aberjhani

#23. The Republic of Macedonia is being built on democratic ideals and values, not on ethnic groups. Those ideals and values include economic opportunities, language and educational opportunities, religious rights, and political processes.

Boris Trajkovski

#24. Rights are either God-given or evolve out of the democratic process. Most rights are based on the ability of people to agree on a social contract, the ability to make and keep agreements.

Rush Limbaugh

#25. We should cease to talk about vague and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.

George F. Kennan

#26. I have an intellectual inclination for democratic institutions, but I am instinctively an aristocrat, which means that I despise and fear the masses. I passionately love liberty, legality, the respect for rights, but not democracy ... liberty is my foremost passion. That is the truth.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#27. Many instances of persecution and killing have occurred in countries with atrocious human rights records such as Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

David Suzuki

#28. Women and gay people are the litmus test of whether a society is democratic and respecting human rights. We are the canaries in the mine.

Peter Tatchell

#29. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was indeed a vital instrument of democracy, ensuring the integrity and reliability of a democratic process that we as a Country hold so dear.

Charles B. Rangel

#30. I'll have them niggers voting Democratic for the next two hundred years. [Said to two governors regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to then-Air Force One steward Robert MacMillan]

Lyndon B. Johnson

#31. LENIN = "Revolutionary Social Democracy"
American Socialists = "Democratic Socialism". What is the difference? The USSR held democratic referendums too; all of which increased the power of the central planners and reduced the individual to nothingness.

A.E. Samaan

#32. Our country, like every modern state, needs profound democratic reforms. It needs political and ideological pluralism, a mixed economy and protection of human rights and the opening up of society.

Andrei Sakharov

#33. So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No.

Jon Stewart

#34. As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. That is how it works in a democratic system and mass fear becomes the ticket to destroy rights across the board.

James Bovard

#35. 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

#36. [A]n unpleasant nest of nasty, materialistic and aggressive people, careless of the rights of others, imperfectly democratic at home though quick to see the minor slaveries of others, and greedy without end.

Isaac Asimov

#37. Majority rule must stop at our unalienable rights. Without that, pure democratic rule is a terrible thing. It's like two wolves and a lamb voting to see what's for dinner.

LaVoy Finicum

#38. Human rights commissions, as they are evolving, are an attack on our fundamental freedoms and the basic existence of a democratic society ... It is in fact totalitarianism. I find this is very scary stuff.

Stephen Harper

#39. The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.

David Blunkett

#40. Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity. Even in times of real danger, political authorities have to prove the case that abridgments of rights are justified.

Michael Ignatieff

#41. In a free and democratic society such as ours, justice should not eternally abrogate one's rights to freedom and liberty, except in the most extreme cases.

Bernard B. Kerik

#42. In fairness, Latin America's elected civilian leaders have made progress in some areas. They have brought their countries back to international respectability, curbed flagrant human rights violations, and sought to build democratic political institutions.

Stephen Kinzer

#43. It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#44. Voting on things is democratic, yes - but not on deciding on whether or not people should be equal or have human rights. That isn't democracy, it is mob rule.

Everybody should be equal in a democracy - that is the nature of a democracy.

Christina Engela

#45. The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadows of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights

Hubert H. Humphrey

#46. Obama's failure to close Guantanamo is yet another instance where the rhetoric of democratic and constitutional rights proved not useful for his international relations, relations which are always pursued in ways that continue to link and fortify securitarian power with the opening of new markets.

Judith Butler

#47. A democratic government that respects no limits on its power is a ticking time bomb, waiting to destroy the rights it was created to protect.

James Bovard

#48. I didn't change. The Democratic Party slid to the Left from right under me.

Charlton Heston

#49. The Czech Republic is a dynamic United Nations Member State, active on the Human Rights Council, contributing to the peaceful settlement of disputes, and helping other countries to achieve a democratic transition.

Ban Ki-moon

#50. It was to carry the American democratic journey beyond these failings that Black citizens and civil rights workers risked unemployment, violence and death.

Elijah Cummings

#51. And I think to be in NATO for the countries of our region, it means more guarantees for us, it means more responsibility for our common security, but it means fulfillment of all standards of civilized world, like protection of human rights and democratic mechanisms.

Aleksander Kwasniewski

#52. The examples of female success stories are important on the global scale, as they help to disseminate the idea of gender equality and to spread the roots for the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and democratic values among different cultures, societies and traditions.

Dalia Grybauskaite

#53. Democracies don't go to war against each other, and by and large they don't sponsor terrorism. They're more likely to respect the environment and human rights and social justice. It's no accident that most of the terrorists come from non-democratic countries.

William J. Clinton

#54. America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

George W. Bush

#55. Since achieving their independence in 1992, the people of Croatia have built a democratic society based on the rule of law, respect for human rights, and a free market economy.

Elton Gallegly

#56. I stand for simple justice, equal opportunity and human rights. The indispensable elements in a democratic society - and well worth fighting for.

Helen Suzman

#57. Specific protection must be granted to human rights defenders and whistleblowers who have in some contexts been accused of being unpatriotic, whereas they perform, in reality, a democratic service to their countries and to the enjoyment of human rights of their compatriots.

Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

#58. We [Israel] already have two very strong democratic tools - the two basic laws of personal liberties and human rights. I think we should also provide the judiciary with another tool so that they can rely on the fact that Israel is a Jewish state in verdicts.

Ayelet Shaked