Quotes About Democratic Society

#1. However democratic and egalitarian we kid ourselves into thinking society might be, I think that sense of entitlement operates as basically and viciously as it always did.

Rory Kinnear

#2. Diversity in media is something that is intrinsic to a democratic society. We do not want the whole media owned by one person.

Jeremy Corbyn

#3. The Americans live in a democratic state of society, which has naturally suggested to them certain laws and a certain political character. This

Alexis De Tocqueville

#4. Only weeks after Oslo began, when nearly all the world and most of Israel was drunk with the idea of peace, I argued that a Palestinian society not constrained by democratic norms would be a fear society that would pose a grave threat to Israel.

Natan Sharansky

#5. In a dynamic democratic society it is indeed difficult to keep in harness the forces of competition.

George W. Stocking

#6. When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.

J. William Fulbright

#7. I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic society, events depend on a strong leadership with a strong power of persuasion, and not on the opinion of the masses.

Yitzhak Shamir

#8. The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism.

Alfred Kazin

#9. The role of the teacher remains the highest calling of a free people. To the teacher, America entrusts her most precious resource, her children; and asks that they be prepared ... to face the rigors of individual participation in a democratic society.

Shirley Hufstedler

#10. I was resolved to sustain and preserve in my college the bite of the mind, the chance to stand face to face with truth, the good life lived in a small, various, highly articulate and democratic society.

Virginia Gildersleeve

#11. Democratic Development is a process of political struggle in which democrats work gains the upper hand in the society over non-democrats which directs aid at core political processes and institutions especially elections, political parties and politically oriented civil groups.

David Eddings

#12. Nearly a half century ago, while Social-Democratic and Communist theoreticians babbled about a society with "work for all," the Dadaists, those magnificent madmen, demanded unemployment for everybody.

Murray Bookchin

#13. Values are most important. Democratic values have to be instilled from childhood and the child sees at an early stage in life in every situation in society.

Ela Bhatt

#14. As the mainstream media has become increasingly dependent on advertising revenues for support, it has become an anti-democratic force in society.

Robert McChesney

#15. 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

#16. Even in democratic society, we don't have good answers how to balance the need for security on one hand and the protection of free speech on the other in our digital networks.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#17. 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

#18. I did a lot of reading. I read about democratic socialism. And I read about the efforts of people for such a long time trying to create a society in which all people can live with dignity. And that's kind of what I believe.

Bernie Sanders

#19. Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought.

Jose Saramago

#20. Still, corruption and oppression are far too common threats to the democratic society.

Anna Lindh

#21. [Felix Frankfurter] said courts are not representative bodies. They're not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society. Their judgment is best informed and, therefore, most dependable within narrow limits.

Sam Brownback

#22. What I said was that in a democratic society, people must be permitted to make their choices and that the choices of women should not be subordinate to the choices of men, otherwise women are less than equal, are second-class citizens.

Dennis Kucinich

#23. The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic.

Vladimir Lenin

#24. 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

#25. Yet in a society of conflicting interests the only democratic way in which matters can be improved is through politics, and politics means the compromising of extremes in order to achieve that notorious half loaf which the passionate and the outraged never find sufficient.

Gore Vidal

#26. What is invaluable about Angela Davis' work is that she does not limit her politics to issues removed from broader social considerations, but connects every aspect of her scholarship and public interventions to what the contours of a truly democratic society might look like.

Henry Giroux

#27. Bombs know no ism but barbarism. The laws that successfully govern a peaceful and democratic society do not interfere with the only law bombs know, which is the law of gravity.

Clare Boothe Luce

#28. It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

Herbert Read

#29. Nothing is more necessary to the culture of the higher sciences, or of the more elevated departments of science, than meditation; and nothing is less suited to meditation than the structure of democratic society.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#30. While an open network ensures the equal treatment of all data - something undoubtedly essential for a democratic networked society - it does not sweep away all the problems of the old-media model, failing to adequately address the commercialization and consolidation of the digital sphere.

Astra Taylor

#31. We're a democratic society. Shutting down the government should not be on the agenda.

Alan Greenspan

#32. My vision is to have an independent Kosovo, democratic, with a politically tolerant society and with a solid economy, integrated into the EU, the NATO and to continue with our good relations with the USA.

Ibrahim Rugova

#33. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

Nelson Mandela

#34. We seek to create a united Democratic and non-racial society.

Oliver Tambo

#35. The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.

Ludwig Von Mises

#36. Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.

Hans Haacke

#37. The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#38. With Taiwan, it took about 40 years to go from an authoritarian to a democratic society.

Ma Ying-jeou

#39. A free economy is as essential to society as democratic political institutions. A strong market-based economy is the fertile ground for democratic freedoms that we think are important.

Lee R. Raymond

#40. Conflict is the essential core of a free and open society. If one were to project the democratic way of life in the form of a musical score, its major theme would be the harmony of dissonance.

Saul D. Alinsky

#41. We have a responsibility to give people opportunities to do what they can do. It's a fundamental tenet of democratic society. Libertarians who believe in a completely minimalist state, and don't feel we have that responsibility, are harming humanity.

Mitch Kapor

#42. I grew up in a dictatorship, so I really appreciate democracy. I think democracy isn't just a random thing that's around - a democratic society needs the involvement of everybody.

Paul Van Dyk

#43. A democratic society depends upon an informed and educated citizenry.

Thomas Jefferson

#44. 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

#45. We, as citizens or members of people's organisations, can preserve and nourish basic principles needed for long-term efforts aimed at transforming a totalitarian and war-torn society into a democratic one.

Katarina Kruhonja

#46. When the human condition is finally demystified, human insecurity and nervousness will be at a maximum ... for this ultimate enlightenment to be allowed, society is going to have to adhere scrupulously to the democratic principle of freedom of expression.

Jeremy Griffith

#47. The more democratic and open a society is, the more it's exposed to terrorism. The more a country is free, not governed by a police regime, the more it risks hijackings or massacres like the ones that took place for many years in Italy and Germany and other parts of Europe.

Oriana Fallaci

#48. 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

#49. We mustn't be stiff and stand-off, you know. We must be thoroughly democratic, and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

George Bernard Shaw

#50. No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry ... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy.

Frances Moore Lappe

#51. Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't.

Brad Holland

#52. If a blending of individualism and of cooperative participation is a prerequisite to a democratic solution of the problems of a society of free men, it must also be noted that an atmosphere of freedom is required if these problems are to be met constructively and as they arise.

Marshall Field

#53. Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.

Molly Ivins

#54. the struggle for an abolitionist democracy is aspiring to create the institutions that will truly allow for a democratic society. What

Angela Y. Davis

#55. If we want to produce people who share the values of a democratic culture, they must be taught those values and not be left to acquire them by chance.

Cal Thomas

#56. 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

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

Helen Suzman

#58. The class distinctions proper to a democratic society are not those of rank or money, still less, as is apt to happen when these are abandoned, of race, but of age.

W. H. Auden

#59. Democracy is disruptive ... there is no right in a democratic civil society to be free of disruption.

Naomi Wolf

#60. My intention in this book is to prove that one single voice, with the right words, can have the roar of a million and can influence the world by creating a precise understanding of democratic socialism - or to be more precise and use the latest terminology, "universal welfare society.

Mikkel Clair Nissen

#61. We're in the middle of the transformation of a society that has handled its politics through repression to a society that will handle its politics through democratic institutions.

Condoleezza Rice

#62. In a democratic society, the only treason is silence.

Anna Quindlen

#63. 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

#64. 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

#65. 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

#66. Sweden is still a very peaceful country to live in. I think that people in Britain have created this mythology about Sweden, that it's a perfect democratic society full of erotically charged girls.

Henning Mankell

#67. In a democratic society, we politicians have to accept criticism, especially when it is founded.

Enrique Pena Nieto

#68. In democratic society each citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty object, which is himself.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#69. 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

#70. Someone who does an act. In a democratic society, you're supposed to be an activist; that is, you participate. It could be a letter written to an editor.

Studs Terkel

#71. Democracy in itself does not define or guarantee a free society. History has told many stories of democratic societies that have degenerated into corruption, plunder, and tyranny.

Richard Ebeling

#72. It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.

Barbara Jordan

#73. The Holocaust also shows us how a combination of events and attitudes can erode a society's democratic values.

Tim Holden

#74. I don't see anything immoral, unethical or illegal for a person in a democratic society to be able to spend their own money on the health care of themself or a loved one.

Brian Day

#75. The problem of education in a democratic society is to do away with ... dualism and to construct a course of studies which makes thought a guide of free practice for all and which makes leisure a reward of accepting responsibility for service, rather than a state of exemption from it.

John Dewey

#76. Egypt needs to catch up with the rest of the world. We need to be free, democratic, and - society where people have the right to live in freedom and dignity.

Mohamed ElBaradei

#77. Our society is illuminated by the spiritual insights of the Hebrew prophets. America and Israel have a common love of human freedom, and they have a common faith in a democratic way of life.

Lyndon B. Johnson

#78. States can be more or less democratic, and so can socialism. I think any ideal society that exists on a large scale, which is what we most likely have in store for us as a human race, will involve some aspects of socialism.

Cynthia Kauffman

#79. The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#80. The completion of the Iraqi cabinet with the appointment of three critical ministers is also confirmation of continued movement toward a just and democratic society in Iraq.

Spencer Bachus

#81. The tortoise moves very slowly, it moves towards whatever the goal is, to keep a democratic capitalistic society functioning.

Lewis Black

#82. At its most basic the democratic contract is a simple one: the right to vote comes with a responsibility to society, through tax payments and citizenship.

Lucy Powell

#83. We need to look at the whole society and think, "Are we actually thinking about what we're doing as we go forward, and are we preserving the really important values that we have in society? Are we keeping it democratic, and open, and so on?"

Tim Berners-Lee

#84. Healthy debate has been replaced by automatic sensors that eliminate the need for actual talking during a filibuster - a la 'Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.' Robust debate is necessary in a democratic society. Instead, our discourse has been relegated to media spin by expert entertainers.

Douglas Wilder

#85. If our courts lose their authority and their rulings are no longer respected, there will be no one left to resolve the divisive issues that can rip the social fabric apart ... The courts are a safety valve without which no democratic society can survive.

Rose Bird

#86. 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

#87. A society with too few independent thinkers is vulnerable to control by disturbed and opportunistic leaders. A society which wants to create and maintain a free and democratic social system must create responsible independence of thought among its young.

John Dewey

#88. Generally speaking, the less privileged groups in democratic society, as they become aware of their interests and their political power, will be found to press for ever more state intervention in practically all fields.

Gunnar Myrdal

#89. Politics in a democratic society should not be treated like a baseball game, a game show or a soap opera. The times are too serious for that.

Bernie Sanders

#90. It's important to recognize that expanding the circle of opportunity
and increasing the democratic potential of our own society,
as well as those across the world, is a continuing process of inclusion.

Hillary Clinton

#91. The ultimate relationship between justice and law will be an eternal subject for speculation and analysis. But it may be said that in a democratic society, law is the form which free men give to justice.

Robert Kennedy

#92. The chief safeguard of personal freedom in a democratic society is the anarchy and disorder of capitalist individualism.

Christopher Dawson

#93. Lincoln understood that the greatest challenge for a leader in a democratic society is to educate public opinion.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

#94. The arts reflect profoundly the most democratic credo, the belief in an individual vision or voice ... The arts' belief in potential gives each of us
both audience and creator
pride in our society's ability to nurture individuals.

Wendy Wasserstein

#95. I came to the United States because I valued living as a free person, one who is able to advocate in a democratic society. Unfortunately, the U.S. has been turning into a less free society, a police and surveillance state, especially after 9/11.

Sami Al-Arian

#96. Baseball, like Pericles' Athens (or any other good society), is simultaneously democratic and aristrocratic. Anyone can enjoy it, but the more you apply yourself, the more you enjoy it.

George Will

#97. Party politics in modern democratic society means pandering to a wide variety of different groups and sympathizing with their often quite base motives, such as revenge, power, booty, and spoils, to maintain the necessary level of support.

Randal Marlin

#98. What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.

Walter Lippmann

#99. 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

#100. How can a democratic discourse exist in a corporate owned informational system? Who, for example, possesses freedom of speech in such a society?

Herbert Schiller