Liberty And Democracy Quotes

#1. The act of voting by ordinary Iraqis in the face of extreme danger confirms President Bush's belief that people around the globe, when given a chance, will choose liberty and democracy over enslavement and tyranny.

John Ensign

#2. Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.

Mahatma Gandhi

#3. Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

H.L. Mencken

#4. I never subscribed to what you might call the neo-Conservative position that somehow, at the barrel of a gun, overnight, liberty and democracy could be conjured up.

Gordon Brown

#5. The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.

Gene Sharp

#6. The American flag is an enduring symbol of liberty, democracy, and justice. It is fitting that the House act to protect it as we approach our nation's birthday, and as our men and women in uniform rally behind it in Iraq's battlefields.

Joe Barton

#7. Liberty came to the West centuries before democracy. Liberty led to democracy and not the other way around.

Fareed Zakaria

#8. Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.

Walter E. Williams

#9. Liberty, freedom and democracy are very fuzzy words, but human rights is very specific.

Joichi Ito

#10. American and Israel share a special bond. Our relationship is unique among all nations. Like America, Israel is a strong democracy, a symbol of freedom, and an oasis of liberty, a home to the oppressed and persecuted.

William J. Clinton

#11. Since Humanism as a functioning credo is so closely bound up with the methods of reason and science, plainly free speech and democracy are its very lifeblood. For reason and scientific method can flourish only in an atmosphere of civil liberties.

Corliss Lamont

#12. Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.
[The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)]

William O. Douglas

#13. And when they do spin out of control there are important ramifications that affect America, not just its direct national interest but its broader interests as a nation which has thought of itself as a beacon to other nations, of freedom, liberty, democracy, whatever.

John Pomfret

#14. He who in given cases consents to obey his fellows with servility, and who submits his will, and even his thoughts, to their control, how can he pretend that he wishes to be free?

Alexis De Tocqueville

#15. Devoid of any real liberty or justice, America and her children had fallen prey to what amounted to little more than a thinly veiled dictatorship. She now represented not the proud citadel of freedom, but the failed experiment of democracy.

Eric J. Martindale

#16. Democracy is in the blood of the Muslims, who look upon complete equality of mankind, and believe in fraternity, equality, and liberty.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah

#17. If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

Aristotle.

#18. Democracy is liberty - a liberty which does not infringe on the liberty nor encroach on the rights of others; a liberty which maintains strict discipline, and makes law its guarantee and the basis of its exercise. This alone is true liberty; this alone can produce true democracy.

Chiang Kai-shek

#19. Democracy, freedom and liberty do not make us more than what we are; it is our commitment that matters.

M.F. Moonzajer

#20. We need to get beyond the politics of the moment, the deficit of the hour, the military count of the day, the numbers that rarely shape events. Our long-term interests must be in people and in the values of democracy and individual liberty.

Bill Bradley

#21. Egypt had the first constitution in the Middle East that allowed for liberty. And it had democracy.

Ahmed Zewail

#22. Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

John Kennedy Toole

#23. When there is liberty, you expect a higher degree of freedom and not human rights abuse.

Auliq Ice

#24. Former Secretary (Hillary) Clinton has dedicated her life to serving and engaging people across the world in democracy. These efforts as a citizen, an activist, and a leader have earned Secretary Clinton this year's Liberty Medal.

Jeb Bush

#25. The case for trade is not just monetary, but moral. Economic freedom creates habits of liberty. And habits of liberty create expectations of democracy.

George W. Bush

#26. To bring about government by oligarchy, masquerading as democracy, it is fundamentally essential that practically all authority and control be centralized in our Federal government ... The individual sovereignty of our states must first be destroyed.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#27. Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.

Mahatma Gandhi

#28. It's important to remember that peace, liberty and freedom changes many aspects in our thoughts as far as life is concerned.

Auliq Ice

#29. 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

#30. Our democracy is dependent on people who passionately cherish the ideals of a democracy. Every man is created equal with an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It's a wonderful idea, and it takes people who cherish that idea to be actively involved in the process.

George Takei

#31. There was something melancholic about that symbol of their nation's promise of freedom, a bell with a chipped mouth and cleft body.

E.A. Bucchianeri

#32. Liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.

H.W. Brands

#33. Political democracy cannot flourish under all economic conditions. Democracy requires an economic system which supports the political ideals of liberty and equality for all. Men cannot exercise freedom in the political sphere when they are deprived of it in the economic sphere.

Mortimer Adler

#34. It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.

Thomas Jefferson

#35. We have proved that the true strength of our nation comes not from the scale of our wealth but from the power of our ideals - opportunity, democracy, liberty and hope.

Barack Obama

#36. In the long and dogged crusade that the human race has fought in favor of democracy, the ideal of liberty, of freedom, has always been the goal.

John Allen Fraser

#37. What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Mahatma Gandhi

#38. [T]he superstitions to be feared in the present day are much less religious than political; and of all the forms of idolatry I know none more irrational and ignoble than this blind worship of mere numbers. - William Lecky, Democracy and Liberty

Bryan Caplan

#39. Libraries are the mainstays of democracy. The first thing dictators do when taking over a country is close all the libraries, because libraries are full of ideas and differences of opinion, all the things we say we want in a free and open society. So keep 'em, fund 'em, embrace and cherish 'em.

David Baldacci

#40. The Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we've seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.

Tommy Franks

#41. We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.

John O. Brennan

#42. I can't think of anything that would do more toward putting us back on the road to liberty and personal responsibility than for the average American, and for the news media, to come to the understanding that we are not a democracy, nor were we supposed to be.

Neal Boortz

#43. Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization.

Louis D. Brandeis

#44. President George Washington's namesake capital, once a marketplace for slave auctions, is now synonymous with democracy and freedom; so is the iconic Jefferson, who wanted to build an "Empire of Liberty" for the world.

Patrick Mendis

#45. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

Penn Jillette

#46. The essence of constitutionalism in a democracy is not merely to shape and condition the nature of majorities, but also to stipulate that certain things are impermissible, no matter how large and fervent a majority might want them.

George Will

#47. Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.

David Blunkett

#48. I confess to considerable doubts about the eventual stability of democracy, unless buttressed by constitutional safeguards and a general climate of opinion which thoroughly understands the case for liberty in general

Lionel Robbins, Baron Robbins

#49. The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.

Fisher Ames

#50. I believe in the fireside. I believe in the democracy of home. I believe in the republicanism of the family. I believe in liberty, equality and love.

Robert G. Ingersoll

#51. Until genuine political, economic, and cultural liberty are established, democracy is unlikely to offer anything more than a simulacrum of legitimacy for an oppressive regime.

David Harsanyi

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. I believe Britishness is defined not on ethnic and exclusive grounds but through shared values; our history of tolerance, openness and internationalism; and our commitment to democracy and liberty, to civic duty and the public space.

David Blunkett

#56. Democracy is the antithesis of liberty. The foundation and cornerstone of liberty is private property and majority rule is thus logically incompatible with this.

Daniel Alexander Brackins

#57. Our democracy depends on an informed citizenry to survive, Your Honor. Besides the advancement of truth, science and morality in general, the freedom of the press is a backbone of democracy. It exists to keep the government transparent, and the human instruments of government honest.

Kenneth Eade

#58. Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

Immanuel Kant

#59. We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.

Reinhold Niebuhr

#60. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life.

B.R. Ambedkar

#61. While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

Charles Evans Hughes

#62. So much of liberalism in its classical sense is taken for granted in the west today and even disrespected. We take freedom for granted, and because of this we don't understand how incredibly vulnerable it is.

Niall Ferguson

#63. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!

Benjamin Franklin

#64. What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty; and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.

Louis D. Brandeis

#65. The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government.

Walter E. Williams

#66. Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.

Margaret Thatcher

#67. Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.

Aung San Suu Kyi

#68. A politician normally prospers under democracy in proportion ... as he excels in the invention of imaginary perils and imaginary defenses against them.

H.L. Mencken

#69. Spain and the United States share the same values of democracy, liberty and fundamental freedoms.

King Felipe VI