“Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy.”
Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller
Source: The Gun Seller
John Pilger, Sydney Peace Prize address http://johnpilger.com/articles/breaking-the-great-australian-silence, Sydney Opera House, 5 November 2009
“Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy.”
Hugh Laurie book The Gun Seller
Source: The Gun Seller
Amy Goodman (1957) American broadcast journalist, syndicated columnist, investigative reporter and author
The Exception to the Rulers written with David Goodman
Ludwig von Mises book Bureaucracy
The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the people’s mandatories. If they do not obey, if they fail to produce, at the lowest possible cost, what the consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities.
Source: Bureaucracy (1944), Chapter I: Profit Management, § 1: The Operation of The Market Mechanism
K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India
Shri K. R. Narayanan President of India in Conversation with N. Ram on Doordarshan and All India Radio
“Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.”
John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer
The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy (1916)
Misc. Quotes
Context: It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.
Manasa Tugia Fijian politician
Parliamentary speech, 5 August 2003
“It is not Socialism that subverts democracy, but democracy that subverts capitalism.”
Michael Parenti (1933) American academic
Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 320
Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady
Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), Democratic Presidential Debate in Miami (March 9, 2016)
George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States
2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)