Top 100 Great Democracy Quotes
#1. A graveyard is not normally a democracy, and yet death is the great democracy,
Neil Gaiman
#3. A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.
Theodore Roosevelt
#4. And in Canada we, you know, it costs us three or $400 million to have an election. You know, it's always been my position that we shouldn't complain about that; that's the price of admission for a living in a great democracy.
Rick Mercer
#5. Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy.
Betty Smith
#6. A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.
Theodore Roosevelt
#7. In dreams we stand in this great democracy of the possible and there we are right pilgrims indeed. There we go forth to meet what we shall meet.
Cormac McCarthy
#8. A great democracy doesn't make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon.
William J. Clinton
#9. War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
#10. The fact that we've been a great democracy doesn't mean we will automatically keep being one if we keep waving the flag.
Norman Mailer
#11. It's abominable, and it's a disgrace to a great democracy to see what's happened in our country. The main reason for that has been the enormous infusion of high quantities of money to campaigns - governors, Congress, president and the U.S. Senate.
Jimmy Carter
#12. You think history is going to remember the United States as a great democracy? No, they're going to think of us as a nation that became addicted to war. They'll call us warlords.
Michael Moore
#13. The goal of a great democracy should be fulfillment, not ease. It should be adequacy, not serenity.
Abram L. Sachar
#14. 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
#15. 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
#17. Our democracy is a people's democracy, and it can be as great as people can be, but it is also as fallible as people are.
George Takei
#18. Democracy can tie your hands in a rock 'n' roll band, you know? It can be a great thing, but if you've got a certain amount of vision and you write a lot of songs, it's sometimes better to have your own band and make your own decisions.
Jason Isbell
#19. The boundaries of democracy have to be widened so as to include economic equality also. This is the great revolution through which we are all passing.
Jawaharlal Nehru
#20. The great gift of American democracy is freedom to think, act, and carry out our lives in a manner that imbues meaning not only to our own life but enhances other people's lives through our everyday actions.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#21. The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.
Lucy Stone
#22. Given that Europe's legacy to the world consists in the two great goods of Christianity and democracy it is hardly surprising if the EU no longer has the endorsement of the European people, even if it has created a network of clients upon whose support it can always rely.
Roger Scruton
#23. On why I don't trust democracy without extremely powerful systems of accountability and recall What seems to be generosity is often only disguised ambition - which despises small interests to gain great ones.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld
#24. Democracy, if it meant what our forefathers said, that would be great, but unfortunately it's been corrupted by this funding and funding of campaigns. There's a much better way to do it. There could be a small amount of money given by every taxpayer to be dedicated to candidates.
George Hamilton
#25. No tempest or conflagration, however great, is harder to quell than mob carried away by the novelty of power.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#26. In democracies, nothing is more great or more brilliant than commerce: it attracts the attention of the public, and fills the imagination of the multitude; all energetic passions are directed towards it.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#27. Small differences in a system of great power can have enormous consequences. [Source: Al Jazeera 'Upfront' interview]
Noam Chomsky
#28. I have great confidence in Taiwan's democracy. I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights, and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan.
Chen Shui-bian
#29. If we don't have workers organized into labor unions, we're in great peril of losing our democracy.
Dolores Huerta
#30. 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
#31. That was the miracle of Abraham Lincoln, politician. He pursued the high purpose of moving justice forward via the low arts of patronage and patronization. Indeed, in a democracy, it is usually the only way great deeds are done.
Joe Klein
#32. The whole world must see that Israel must exist and has the right to exist, and is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#33. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.
H.L. Mencken
#34. Even if I were knocked down by one gunshot it wouldn't affect our democracy and I wasn't knocked down and I have great confidence in our democracy and in Taiwan and in the people of Taiwan.
Chen Shui-bian
#35. Nowhere has democracy ever worked well without a great measure of local self-government, providing a school of political training for the people at large as much as for their future leaders.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#36. A man who doesn't detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government in earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#37. The First Amendment makes confidence in the common sense of our people and in the maturity of their judgement the great postulate of our democracy.
William O. Douglas
#38. There is a dualism inherent in democracy
opposing forces pushing against each other, always. Culture clashes. Different belief systems. All coming together to create this country. But this balance takes a great deal of energy.
Libba Bray
#39. In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#40. Good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great.
Ronald Reagan
#41. Neither should the theater in our country be regarded as a luxury. It is a necessity because in order to make democracy work the people must increasingly participate; they can't participate unless they understand; and the theater is one of the great mediums of understanding.
Hallie Flanagan
#42. It would be foolish and wrong to ignore the fact that all our universities today tread a very dangerous path. Increasingly, they are accepting government money because they are doing things that government wants done. How great a peril is this in a democracy?
Vincent Massey
#43. I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.
Abraham Lincoln
#44. Do you know that one of the great problems of our age is that we are governed by people who care more about feelings than they do about thoughts and ideas.
Margaret Thatcher
#45. 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
#46. I think he [Vaclav Havel] is one of the great figures of the 20th century. He is one of the people that was able to be a part of overthrowing a dictatorial system by talking to people and understanding what the elements of democracy really are and respect for each other and elevating.
Judy Woodruff
#48. Not less, but more democracy - that is the demand, that is the great goal that we have to prescribe for ourselves, and especially for our youth.
Gustav Heinemann
#49. For all the enlightened nations that profess a loyalty to liberty, democracy, economy and all the rest, there has long been a readiness to look for a chosen one; as Carlyle pointed out, even the French, those great anti-venerators, those relentless beheaders of Great Men, worshipped Voltaire.
Chris Anderson
#50. We must be," the President said, "the great arsenal of democracy.
A.J. Baime
#51. America must begin the struggle for democracy at home. The advocacy of free elections in Europe by American officials is hypocrisy when free elections are not held in great sections of America.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#52. The younger generation is essentially idealistic. This applies to the Iranian youth as well. In addition, the youth in Iran face certain difficulties ... the Iranian youth need more freedom. They are struggling for more freedom and democracy. This commands great respect.
Shirin Ebadi
#53. If the great Western experiment fails and we end up living in totalitarian war-on-terrorism states, one day someone's going to say, 'Well democracy doesn't work because they had to give it up'.
Martin Firrell
#54. There is nothing beyond the reach of ordinary citizens doing the daily work of democracy, and no problem too great to tackle with the power of active citizenship.
Joan Claybrook
#55. Will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into war or a willing ally co-operating with her in the prosecution of a defence of true democracy?
Mahatma Gandhi
#56. The Senate floor is and always has been the great arena of our democracy. I spent eight years in my younger life as a boxer, and sometimes when I enter the chamber, I think, 'This is the ring. The American people can see us here and listen to our arguments. This is where the fights matter.'
Jim Webb
#57. People in so many countries look up to the United States as a model of democracy, but I doubt if that can continue. It leaves me with a great sense of loss.
Bianca Jagger
#58. Democracy is a great institution and, therefore, it is liable to be greatly abused.
Mahatma Gandhi
#59. As a Republic governed through the utilization of a democratic process, elections are necessary in order to give every United States citizen a voice in the governing of this great nation.
Byron Goines
#60. Freedom of speech is central to most every other right that we hold dear in the United States and serves to strengthen the democracy of our great country. It is unfortunate, then, when actions occur that might be interpreted as contrary to this honored tenet.
Sam Farr
#61. The black hole in democracy is integrity. The great unspoken is integrity. When integrity is not first and foremost, it's quite palpable but not visible. It's always there. Jazz highlights it because musicians and jazz always represented a high level of integrity.
Wynton Marsalis
#62. A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.
James Weldon Johnson
#63. I am and will remain the president of all Cameroonians without exception, and the great winner in these elections is democracy
Paul Biya
#64. The great thing about our system of democracy is when they call you for jury duty, you have to come ... It's an honor and a privilege. I was called and I've got to be here.
Antonio Villaraigosa
#65. Great teachers should be paid like doctors or corporate attorneys. I worry about what will happen to our economy and our democracy if we don't start to take teachers' jobs seriously.
Ninive Clements Calegari
#66. I still have great faith in democracy. I have great belief in the power of community.
Terry Tempest Williams
#67. It's great that we're bringing democracy to Iraq. I can't wait to see how we do it! What are we gonna do, give them our civics textbooks?
Lewis Black
#68. Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.
Bertrand Russell
#69. There is no great force for change, for peace, for justice and democracy, for inclusive economic growth than a world of empowered women.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
#70. America is the most violent democracy in the world. It's something that's met with great shock, horror, and mystery when I travel to other countries. They ask, Why are there so many shootings in America? Why does everyone own a gun?
Patricia Cornwell
#71. Rosa Luxemburg was - still is for me - a great personal and intellectual heroine. Her analysis of Leninism and capitalism and social democracy are all worth reading. I wouldn't consider anyone truly politically literate if they hadn't given her work at least some study.
Christopher Hitchens
#72. 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
#73. This is the first great problem of modern democracy ... how to get a fair living by reasonable hours of work leaving enough leisure for both childhood and manhood.
John R. Commons
#74. But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We're fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction.
Suzanne Collins
#75. One voice is tiny, and alone it cannot be heard above the din of politics as usual. The peoples voice, when it cries as one, is a great roar.
Ross Perot
#76. To find ways of practicing democracy, not ways of orating about it, is our great problem.
Mary Barnett Gilson
#77. The Internet was crucial for our success. It is a great thing. It is a big democracy because people can choose what they like.
Stjepan Hauser
#78. Democracy is the great love of the failures and cowards of life.
R.J. Rushdoony
#79. Equality and justice, the two great distinguishing characteristics of democracy, follow inevitably from the conception of men, all men, as rational and spiritual beings.
Robert M. Hutchins
#80. Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Gore Vidal
#81. Increase in the wealth per capita fosters democracy; but the latter, at least according to what we have been able to observe up to now, entails great destruction of wealth and even eventually dries up the sources of it. Hence it is its own grave-digger, it destroys what gave it birth.
Vilfredo Pareto
#82. As the familiar quote usually attributed to Supreme Court justice Louis D. Brandeis goes, We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Jaron Lanier
#83. We're going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There's no question about that. Let's face up to that. We're going to have to put in money if Russia is really going to consolidate a democracy.
Jeffrey Sachs
#84. Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.
David K. Shipler
#85. What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#86. The real strength of democracy is that anyone who is not specifically against it must ultimately be for it, while communism suffers from the great tactical liability that anyone who is not specifically for it is eventually forced to oppose it.
Edwin O. Reischauer
#87. Democracy represents the disbelief in all great men and in all elite societies: everybody is everybody's equal.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#88. Democracy's ceremonial, its feast, it's great function, is the election.
H.G.Wells
#89. If we don't have a vigorous questioning, aggressive journalistic community and mythology, democracy itself is in great jeopardy.
Milton Glaser
#90. The two great points of difference between a democracy and a republic are: first, the delegation of the government, in the latter,to a small number of citizens elected by the rest; secondly, the greater number of citizens and greater sphere of country over which the latter may be extended.
James Madison
#91. Well, I think by any expectation South Africa has come a tremendously long way. We've seen a society that many people thought couldn't withstand a peaceful transition to democracy without a great deal of violence, in fact, make that transition and do it in relative peace and security.
Susan Rice
#92. This must be a world of democracy and respect for human rights, a world freed from the horrors of poverty, hunger, deprivation and ignorance, relieved of the threat and the scourge of civil wars and external aggression and unburdened of the great tragedy of millions forced to become refugees.
Nelson Mandela
#94. The birth of democracy in Iraq is one of the great positive changes of our era.
Ernest Istook
#95. Why do I feel ashamed to use words like democracy and
freedom and brotherhood? They don't have meaning any
more. I have nothing to write about any more. Remember
all that writing I did? I was going to be a great socialist
writer. I can't make sense of a word, a simple word.
Arnold Wesker
#96. However, it was the great 18th century social philosophers John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau who brought the concept of a social contract between citizens and governments sharply into political thinking, paving the way for popular democracy and constitutional republicanism.
Simon Mainwaring
#97. What I hear every day on talk radio is America's lack of education - and I don't mean lack of college degrees. I mean lack of the basic art of democracy, the ability to seek the great truths that can come only by synthesizing the small truths possessed by each of us.
Donella Meadows
#98. Democracy is our commitment. It is our great legacy, a legacy we simply cannot compromise. Democracy is in our DNA.
Narendra Modi
#99. In 1940, President Roosevelt called on American industry to become the 'great arsenal of democracy.' Automotive manufacturers in Michigan responded and converted their assembly lines from cars to tanks and helped America win World War II.
Sander Levin
#100. If the great story of the last century was the conflict among various political ideologies-communism, fascism and democracy-then the great narrative of this century will be the changes wrought by astonishing scientific breakthroughs
Cynthia Tucker
