Top 100 Quotes About Democratic Government
#1. There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.
Fidel Castro
#2. The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#3. Decades, if not centuries are normally required for people to acquire the necessary disciplines and habits. (for democracy) In Britain, the road to (democratic government) took seven centuries to traverse .
Jeane Kirkpatrick
#4. Just as democratic government cannot be condemned because of errors and even crimes committed by men democratically elected, so trade-unionism must not be condemned because of errors or crimes of occasional trade-union leaders.
Theodore Roosevelt
#5. When you can't do any housecleaning because everything that goes on is a damned secret, then we're on our way to something the Founding Fathers didn't have in mind. Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.
Harry S. Truman
#6. 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
#7. The big problem for a democratic government - democrat with a small "d" - is how to hold down government spending.
Milton Friedman
#8. I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#9. Unemployment is a reproach to a democratic government.
Joan Robinson
#10. As the Iraqi people better understand that Saddam Hussein and his regime are history, it is my hope that they will get behind the coalition effort to help them create a democratic government and rebuild their country.
Pete Domenici
#11. It is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.
Friedrich August Von Hayek
#12. Athens' biggest worry was the sheer recklessness of its own democratic government. A simple majority of the citizenry, urged on and incensed by clever demagogues, might capriciously send out military forces in unnecessary and exhausting adventures.
Thucydides
#13. The tow pillars of democratic government are the primacy of the law and the budget.
Ludwig Von Mises
#14. When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing. You have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all of society.
Edward Brooke
#15. When people become more reliant on multinational corporations than on their own communities, they surrendered whatever say they had in their government. Corporations are growing stronger while democratic government becomes increasingly helpless.
Daniel Suarez
#16. The president who is most slandered as Hitler will probably prove to be the most zealous advocate of democratic government abroad, the staunchest friend of beleaguered Israel, and the greatest promoter of global individual freedom in our recent memory.
Victor Davis Hanson
#17. People everywhere do not concern themselves much beyond the common round of everyday, and this is the chief problem for a democratic government, whose success depends upon an informed and responsible citizenry.
Pearl S. Buck
#18. If when I die, I am still a dictator, I will certainly go down into the oblivion of all dictators. If, on the other hand, I succeed in establishing a truly stable foundation for a democratic government, I will live forever in every home in China.
Chiang Kai-shek
#19. The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government.
Fidel Castro
#20. Well, we're [USA] not looking for an ally; what we're looking for is a stable, democratic government that is not beholden to anyone in the region and is able to be secure within its own borders and have its own policy.
Joe Biden
#21. Popular and democratic government is the only constitution which suits France, and all those who are worthy of the name of men.
Camille Desmoulins
#22. Democratic government needs parties; parties do not need democracy.
Jacob T. Levy
#23. Without commonly shared and widely entrenched moral values and obligations, neither the law, nor democratic government, nor even the market economy will function properly.
Vaclav Havel
#24. In other words, a democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#25. I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government.
Lincoln Steffens
#26. In order to continue in office, any government (not simply a 'democratic' government) must have the support of the majority of its subjects. This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature.
Murray Rothbard
#27. A world of unseen dictatorship is conceivable, still using the forms of democratic government.
Kenneth E. Boulding
#28. Franklin may ... be considered one of the founding fathers of American democracy, since no democratic government can last long without conciliation and compromise.
Samuel Eliot Morison
#29. To take an analogy: if we say that a democratic government is the best kind of government, we mean that it most completely fulfills the highest function of a government - the realisation of the will of the people.
John Drinkwater
#30. Sabotage did not involve loss of life, and it offered the best hope for future race relations. Bitterness would be kept to a minimum and, if the policy bore fruit, democratic government could become a reality.
Nelson Mandela
#31. Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.
Robert Taft
#32. The government of the German Democratic Republic rejects secret policies. It works for the people, and only the people, so it does not need to keep secrets like the warmongers.
Walter Ulbricht
#33. 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
#34. Our fumbling government's response since Beirut - during both Republican and Democratic administrations - has been to cut and run, or to flat ignore this growing threat, apparently hoping it would go away.
David Hackworth
#35. The Popular Unity government represented the first attempt anywhere to build a genuinely democratic transition to socialism a socialism that, owing to its origins, might be guided not by authoritarian bureaucracy, but by democratic self-rule.
Salvador Allende
#36. I was the deputy Chairman of the Democratic Union of the Pacific, and we started at 8 I think and I was called to the telephone and to be told there's a coup, the government has been overthrown - it was round about 9, 10 when the Parliament sat they had done then.
Kamisese Mara
#37. The natural proclivity of democratic governments is to pursue public policies which concentrate benefits on the well-organized and well-informed, and disperse the costs on the unorganized and ill-informed.
Peter Boettke
#38. No government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked ...
Peter Thorneycroft, Baron Thorneycroft
#39. The Chief Whip's job is trying to make sure that the Government - and MPs elected as part of the governing party - deliver the promises that they were elected on. That's a healthy part of the democratic process.
Geoff Hoon
#40. And gradually they're beginning to recognize the fact that there's nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it's sunk in only theoretically, it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.
Wole Soyinka
#41. A fundamental premise of American democratic theory is that government exists to serve the people ... Public records are one portal through which the people observe their government, ensuring its accountability, integrity, and equity while minimizing sovereign mischief and malfeasance
Sandra Day O'Connor
#42. Everyone agrees that our ultimate goal is to establish a free, open and democratic Iraqi government and bring our men and women in uniform home as soon as possible.
James T. Walsh
#43. When Chinese people want liberal reforms, they are delivered. When they want more Communism and an epic fight against corruption, like now, China's government immediately reacts. It is powerful and democratic, although a very specific and complex arrangement.
Andre Vltchek
#44. Throughout history, when societies face tough economic times, we have seen democratic reforms deferred, decreased trust in government, persecution of minority groups, and a general shrinking of the democratic space.
Samantha Power
#45. Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.
Jean-Baptiste Rousseau
#46. A democratic form of government, a democratic way of life, presupposes free public education over a long period; it presupposes also an education for personal responsibility that too often is neglected.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#47. When a plutocracy is disguised as a democracy, the system is beyond corrupt.
Suzy Kassem
#48. When democratic governments create economic calamity, free markets get the blame.
Jack Kemp
#50. The modern State, whether in a totalitarian or a democratic country, has far too much power, and we are probably right to fear it.
Anthony Burgess
#51. Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability.
Benjamin Harrison
#52. Governments, including free and democratic governments, are not really friendly to freedom and democracy. They abhor any rule of law that limits their powers and penchant for social engineering.
George Jonas
#53. Defeatism about the feasibility of plans for disarmament and ordered peace has been the most calamitious of all the errors made by democratic governments in modern times.
Philip Noel-Baker, Baron Noel-Baker
#54. Democratic self-government has manifestly brought benefits to India, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, South Africa, South Korea, and scores of nations all making their way in the world.
Michael Gove
#55. Even if a government can be constitutional without being democratic, it cannot be democratic without being constitutional.
Clinton Rossiter
#56. We're a democratic society. Shutting down the government should not be on the agenda.
Alan Greenspan
#57. If the minority is able to successfully undo the Affordable Care Act by blackmail, it will be the undoing of the democratic nature of our government.
Jerrold Nadler
#58. We've been so preoccupied with getting the government to behave in a fair and democratic way, we were not able to focus on the private sector where most of the jobs are, where most of the wealth and opportunities are.
Jesse Jackson
#59. The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#60. There is no greater threat to a free and democratic nation than a government that fails to protect its citizen's freedom and liberty as aggressively as it pursues justice.
Bernard B. Kerik
#61. Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
H.L. Mencken
#62. Ensuring the access of all citizens to government information and to essential information for human development is a must for every democratic society.
Koichiro Matsuura
#63. It is acknowledged, namely, that there are in the world three forms of government, autocracy, oligarchy, and democracy: autocracies and oligarchies are administered according to the tempers of their lords, but democratic states according to established laws.
Aeschines
#64. The citizens of Love Canal provided an example of how a blue-collar community with few resources can win against great odds (a multi-billion-dollar international corporation and an unresponsive government), using the power of the people in our democratic system.
Lois Gibbs
#65. Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials.
Thomas Frank
#66. I believe we need a more opportunistic and democratic approach to lunar exploration, now that we're shifting from U.S. government-sponsored space exploration to private expeditions.
Naveen Jain
#67. The British Government very naturally would like to see in India the form of democratic constitutions it knows best and thinks best, under which the Government of the country is entrusted to one or other political party in accordance with the turn of elections.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah
#68. Our government has failed us. From the billion-dollar bailouts to the 'stimulus' package that failed to stimulate to the government takeover of health care, you cried 'Stop!' ... but the Democratic Majority in Washington has refused to listen.
Kevin McCarthy
#69. It is critical that Democratic candidates, whether they are in New Jersey, or Virginia, or anywhere, emphasize the fact that we can be trusted, and can bring fiscal integrity to our state, local, and national government.
Mark Warner
#70. A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.
John Stuart Mill
#71. Useful as a war against France, undertaken by the Government against the will of the people would be for our revolutionary development, just so dangerous must be the effect upon our democratic development of a war supported by blind popular enthusiasm.
Ferdinand Lassalle
#72. We no longer claim that a genuinely religious government can be democratic, but that it cannot be otherwise.
Abdolkarim Soroush
#73. John F. Kennedy asked us what we could do for America. This Democratic Party asks what can government give you. Don't worry about paying the bill, it's on your kids and grandkids.
Artur Davis
#74. I am of opinion, that, in the democratic ages which are opening upon us, individual independence and local liberties will ever be the produce of artificial contrivance; that centralization will be the natural form of government.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#75. Even in non-democratic countries, people have a legitimate interest in knowing about actions taken by the government.
Peter Singer
#76. The American influence is not so aggressive anymore. The American big business influence in Latin America is not as strong, so people can vote and they can have a different life than before. They can have more liberal, more interesting, and more democratic governments.
Costa-Gavras
#77. It will require a sustained military and financial commitment by the international community, working with the government of Afghanistan, to create the environment in which enduring democratic institutions can be established.
Des Browne
#78. Curtailment of free speech is rationalized on grounds that a more compelling American tradition forbids criticism of the government when the nation is at war ... Nothing can be more destructive of our fundamental democratic traditions than the vicious effort to silence dissenters.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#79. To prosper, a zoo needs parliamentary government, democratic elections, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of association, rule of law and everything else enshrined in India's Constitution. Impossible to enjoy the animals otherwise. Long-term, bad politics is bad for business.
Yann Martel
#80. Americans became so thoroughly democratic that much of the period's political activity, beginning with the Constitution, was diverted to finding means and devices to tame that democracy.
Gordon S. Wood
#81. I wholeheartedly support the aspirations of the Ukrainian people for a democratic, free and just society where the rule of law prevails without corruption or government violence directed against citizens.
Marcy Kaptur
#82. The trouble with the social-democratic state is that, when government does too much, nobody else does much of anything.
Mark Steyn
#83. The Democratic Party might be called the Takings Coalition, made up of groups that want the government to take from American citizens
usually cash
and keep it for itself.
Grover Norquist
#84. It matters enormously to a successful democratic society like ours that we have three branches of government, each with some independence and some control over the other two. That's set out in the Constitution.
Sandra Day O'Connor
#85. Open-market democratic capitalism isn't the best system of government in the world, it just works the best.
John Ringo
#86. No theory of government was ever given a fairer test or a more prolonged experiment in a democratic country than democratic socialism received in Britain. Yet it was a miserable failure in every respect ... To cure the British disease with socialism was like trying to cure leukemia with leeches.
Margaret Thatcher
#87. Democratic elections alone do not remedy the crisis of confidence in government. Moreover, there is no viable justification for a democratic system in which public participation is limited to voting.
Beth Simone Noveck
#88. I do strongly believe myself that members of the government who sit in the House of Lords should be accountable to the elected House because otherwise there is a democratic deficit, and that is wrong.
John Bercow
#89. The principal purpose of the Democratic Party is to use the force of government to take property away from the people who earn it and give it to people who do not.
Neal Boortz
#90. Even the average citizen of the very first democratic country has a few things to complain about with regard to their government's deeds or lack thereof.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#91. You've got the Democratic Party that now depends on more government spending and actual building the dependence on government in order to increase their political party.
Jim DeMint
#92. Socialism is socialism. Government run enterprises are just as inept under democratic governments as they are under autocratic governments.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo
#93. If you can't even manage to to force your own presumably democratic governments to allow you to do good things for yourselves, then you probably deserve to become extinct.
Ishmael
#94. The Democratic Party is made up of trial lawyers, labor unions, government employees, big city political machines, the coercive utopians, the radical environmentalists, feminists, and others who want to restructure society with tax dollars and government fiat.
Grover Norquist
#95. After adding trillions to the debt on big-government policies most Americans didn't ask for and which we couldn't afford, Democratic leaders say they need more money, which they intend to take from small business, even though small businesses create the majority of new jobs.
Mitch McConnell
#96. I have left the federal government and the German Bundestag; I have resigned from all my positions in the Social Democratic Party of Germany.
Gustav Heinemann
#97. There is danger that totalitarian governments, not subject to vigorous popular debate, will underestimate the will and unity of democratic societies where vital interests are concerned.
John F. Kennedy
#98. The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.
Noam Chomsky
#99. Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create.
Lillian Hellman
#100. What the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.
Thomas Sowell
