Quotes about democracy (2106 quotes, page 13)

“Many observers have exposed the democracy deficits of the international and domestic order; identified threats to international peace; warned against the military-industrial and military-financial complexes; and denounced the retrogression in social justice associated with so-called “austerity measures”. The diagnoses of think tanks universities and researchers are fairly clear, their recommendations sensible and implementable, but changing the status quo has proven difficult, primarily because of lack of transparency and accountability in political processes, and because of powerful vested interests. Not without irony it has been noted that often those who are elected do not govern, and those who do govern are not elected.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Alfred de Zayas' comments to the remarks made by NGOs and States during the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council Session http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13713&LangID=E Comments by Alfred de Zayas, Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, following the Interactive Dialogue on the presentation of his thematic report.
2013

Peace , Justice , Thinking , Universe

“By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.”

Alexis De Tocqueville book Democracy in America

Book One, Chapter XIII.
Democracy in America, Volume II (1840), Book One

Books , Art , Imagination , Literature

“The minority must have involvement in society. You can have different cultural practices that you accept. But if you are going to adopt democracy in government, then the government itself must allow the minority to be heard.”

Sheila Jackson Lee (1950) American politician

As quoted in an interview by Rami Eljundi in World Internet News (26 April 2006)

“On the immigration issue the suspicions towards democracy and the distrust towards free speech have come largely from the Left. The distrust of free speech has been especially noticeable amongst a small scatter of academics, members of a profession that by its very nature depends on freedom of inquiry and speech.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

Nature , Freedom , Dependency

“Public opinion can become polarized into a bimodal distribution with only a few people in the centre and many more lying toward the extremes. But under such circumstances, democracy will probably break down into civil war, and spatial models of party competition will be irrelevant until order is restored.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) (1944) author, academic, and political activist

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 9, Invasion From The Right: Reform Party in 1993 Election, p. 142.

War , People , Lying

“Terrorism is trying to paralyze and silence democracies fighting against it, exactly as was manifest in the world's reaction to Israel's counter-terrorist offensive Cast Lead in light of the Goldstone Report.”

Reuven Rivlin (1939) Israeli politician, 10th President of Israel

Israel national news http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/136165#.U5g1Yfl_uch, 23 February 2010

World , Light , Silence , Fight

“On their own, new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress, but the United States does. We stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. […] The internet can help bridge divides between people of different faiths. As the President said in Cairo, freedom of religion is central to the ability of people to live together. And as we look for ways to expand dialogue, the internet holds out such tremendous promise. […] We are also supporting the development of new tools that enable citizens to exercise their rights of free expression by circumventing politically motivated censorship. We are providing funds to groups around the world to make sure that those tools get to the people who need them in local languages, and with the training they need to access the internet safely. The United States has been assisting in these efforts for some time, with a focus on implementing these programs as efficiently and effectively as possible. Both the American people and nations that censor the internet should understand that our government is committed to helping promote internet freedom. We want to put these tools in the hands of people who will use them to advance democracy and human rights, to fight climate change and epidemics, to build global support for President Obama's goal of a world without nuclear weapons, to encourage sustainable economic development that lifts the people at the bottom up.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

"Remarks on Internet Freedom", The Newseum, Washington, DC, January 21, 2010 http://web.archive.org/web/20100123145341/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135519.htm
Secretary of State (2009–2013)

People , World , Faith , Religion

“The BNP isn't about selling out its ideas, which are your ideas too, but we are determined to sell them. Basically, that means to use saleable words – such as freedom, identity, security, democracy. […]
Once we're in a position where we control the British broadcasting media, then perhaps one day the British people might change their mind and say, 'yes, every last one must go'. But if you hold that out as your sole aim to start with, you're not going to get anywhere. So, instead of talking about racial purity, we talk about identity. […]
There's a difference between selling out your ideas and selling your ideas, and the British National Party isn't about selling out its ideas, which are your ideas too, but we are determined now to sell them, and that means basically to use the saleable words, as I say, freedom, security, identity, democracy. Nobody can criticise them. Nobody can come at you and attack you on those ideas. They are saleable.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

– talking to the American Friends of the BNP —

People , Idea , Freedom , Change

“A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.”

Emil M. Cioran book History and Utopia

History and Utopia (1960)

“The procedure we are pursuing is that of true democracy. Semi-democracy accepts the dictatorship of a majority in establishing its arbitrary, ergo, unnatural, laws. True democracy discovers by patient experiment and unanimous acknowledgement what the laws of nature or universe may be for the physical support and metaphysical satisfaction of the human intellect's function in universe.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

1960s, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth (1963)

Law , Support , Nature , Universe

“A lack of moral clarity is also the tragedy that has befallen efforts to advance peace and security in the world. Promoting peace and security is fundamentally connected to promoting freedom and democracy.”

Natan Sharansky book The Case for Democracy

Preface, page xix.
The Case for Democracy (2004, with Ron Dermer)

World , Peace , Effort , Freedom

“By their critisism of the existing system, which repeats the Social-Democratic critisism almost word for word, the Bolshevik opposition is preparing minds … for the acceptance of the positive platform of Social-Democracy. … Not only among the mass of the workers, but among communist workers as well, the opposition is rearing the shoots of ideas and sentiments which, if skillfully tended, may easily bear social-democratic fruit.”

Fyodor Dan (1871–1947) Russian revolutionary

Dan in Sotsiallistichesky Vestnik no. 17-18 about the Trotskyite opposition in the Soviet Union. Quote from Harpal Brar's Trotskyism or Leninism? p. 476.

Idea

“When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.”

William Randolph Hearst (1863–1951) American newspaper publisher

"In the News" (June 13, 1941)

Death

“In Iraq, the fight has been difficult, yet daily life has improved dramatically over the past 20 months, thanks to the courage of the Iraqi people, a determined coalition of nations, and a surge of American troops. The United Nations has provided the mandate for multinational forces in Iraq through this December. And the United Nations is carrying out an ambitious strategy to strengthen Iraq's democracy, including helping Iraqis prepare for their next round of free elections. Whatever disagreements our nations have had on Iraq, we should all welcome this progress toward stability and peace, and we should stand united in helping Iraq's democracy succeed.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2008, Address to the United Nations General Assembly (September 2008)

Life , People , Peace , Courage

“Legally and to outward seeming the American President is the successor of Washington, and still enjoys powers devised and limited by the Convention of Philadelphia. In reality the new President differs from the Magistrate imagined by the Fathers of the Republic as widely as Monarchy from Democracy…”

John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton (1834–1902) British politician and historian

p, 125
The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)

Imagination , Reality

“There are many democracies in our Arab and Islamic countries, but unfortunately, they are all false democracies.”

Yusuf Qaradawi (1926) Egyptian imam

Sheik Youssef Al-Qaradhawi in Favor of Democratic Elections in the Arab World http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/129.htm June 2004.
Democracy

Falseness , Country

“His motive—his motive is to change our policies, sir. Notwithstanding what the president or Mr. Kerry said during the campaign, he really doesn't give a darn about our democracy or our society. He is after a change in policies which he views as lethal to Muslims.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

on Osama bin Laden's reasons for wanting to kill Americans
Hardball with Chris Matthews, November 16 2004.
2000s

Motivation , Change

“If believers feel that their faith is trivialized and their true selves compromised by a society that will not give religious imperatives special weight, their problem is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Freedom from Religion" in The Nation (19 February 2001)

Faith , Feeling , Problem

“This trendy, new crowd, which likes to do everything with committees, really believes that all it takes to make anything legal and OK is a majority. I guess they call that democracy. When the majority is what it has become in the United States today, a better name is mobocracy. But really, it's much worse than mob rule. It is rule by a self-appointed elite of utterly evil and destructive people who have in their hands the tools for controlling and guiding the mob. They're pretty cocky now -- so cocky, in fact, that they're making statements of the sort I've quoted today. They're cocky because they believe that no one can take away from them their tools for controlling the mob, and that as time passes and America becomes darker and more degenerate, their grip on the mob will only become firmer. Our job is to prove them wrong. It's a big job, and we'd better get started.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

The New World Order, 1999.
1990s, 1990

People , Quotes , Evil , Time

“Italy, we know, has been tied since 1949 to the United States in the Atlantic Alliance; and since 1949, there has been some strong resistance inside the Christian Democracy toward such a decisive, entangling, and suffocating involvement of our country with the United States. The most significant resistance to the Atlantic Alliance was perhaps not that of the great parliamentary protest mounted by the Communist and Socialist parties, but the subtler, more decisive, more pregnant, and more enduring resistance of certain sectors of the Christian Democracy who did not want to hitch Italy to the chariot of an unequal alliance, in which the scepter of com¬mand remained in the hands of the United States, but rather thought about the possibility of a neutralist policy for Italy”

Nico Perrone (1935) Italian historian and writer

Source: The Strategic Stakes in Mattei's Flight, p. 23

Decision , Strong , Country

“We go to battle against the plutocratic and reactionary democracies of the west… This gigantic struggle is nothing other than a phase in the logical development of our revolution; it is the struggle of peoples that are poor but rich in workers against the exploiters who hold on ferociously to the monopoly off all the riches and all the gold of the earth…”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

“Declaration of War on France and England,” Mussolini Speech on June 10, 1940
1940s

People

“If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.”

Irving Kristol (1920–2009) American columnist, journalist, and writer

Pornography, Obscenity, and the Case for Censorship http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wbutler/kristol.html (1995).
1990s

Life

“While the written word was the foundation, it is apparent that the spoken word was the vehicle for convincing the people. This came with great force and wide range from the successors of Hooker and Wise, It was carried on with a missionary spirit which did not fail to reach the Scotch-Irish of North Carolina, showing its influence by significantly making that Colony the first to give instructions to its delegates looking to independence. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his "best ideas of democracy" had been secured at church meetings.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

People , Idea

“Labour was different to other European Social Democratic Parties in that it was never aggressively secular and was not divided by confessional fissures. Its founding act, the Dock Strike of 1889 was brokered by the Salvation Army and Cardinal Manning. It was never a revolutionary party that became more peaceable but was, from the start, committed to extending democracy within the inherited constitution. It also had a base of support among the working class that secured British democracy from Fascism and Communism and that was because of its paradoxical nature, as conservative as it was radical, as patriotic as it was nationalist. The greatest failure of New Labour is that it led rather than resisted the definition of the European Union as a neo-liberal project and did not develop a constructive alternative to the status quo. It seemed incapable of distinguishing between internationalism and globalisation.”

Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman (1961) British philosopher

The case against remaining in the EU on LabourList.org, 2 June 2016 http://labourlist.org/2016/06/why-should-labour-support-the-european-union-the-case-for-out/

Communication , Failure , Support , Nature

“The implicit, or even explicit, offer made by authoritarians is stability in exchange for liberty. High oil prices allowed Putin to keep this bargain for a while, aided by an international community that lost interest in promoting liberty as soon as the Berlin Wall fell. Putin was welcomed by the G7 as an equal while destroying democracy and civil society at home. Imagine how difficult it was for us in Russia to attack Putin’s regime as undemocratic while he was being embraced by the leaders of the free world. Even Putin’s invasion of neighboring Georgia in August 2008 resulted in no censure or sanction. He was rewarded by Obama and Hillary Clinton’s reset a few months later, confirming to him that a move into Ukraine would also go unchallenged.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

2010s, The Truth About Putin (2018)

World , Home , Imagination , Communication

“I believe we are on an irreversible trend towards more freedom and democracy, but that could change.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

cited to the Wall Street Journal (26 May 1989)

Freedom , Change

“Democracies owe their existence to national loyalties — the loyalties that are supposedly shared by government and opposition, by all political parties, and by the electorate as a whole. Wherever the experience of nationality is weak or non-existent, democracy has failed to take root. For without national loyalty, opposition is a threat to government, and political disagreements create no common ground.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

Loyalty

“True democracy makes no enquiry about the color of skin, or the place of nativity, whereever it sees man, it recognizes a being endowed by his Creator with original inalienable rights.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

Address accepting a testimonial of gratitude from the colored people of Cincinnati for the advocacy in the case of Samuel Watson (February 12, 1845).

Color

“A neutral observer would have no difficulty in identifying instances of disconnect between government and people, most obviously in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes where civil society’s voices are muzzled and where peaceful protests are prohibited or severely suppressed,24 but also to a lesser degree in democracies, particularly “representative democracies” that do not genuinely represent, business-driven democracies and so-called “lobby-democracies”, where elected officials tend to be more responsive to the lobbies than to the population.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

United Nations General Assembly - Promotion of a democratic and equitable international order http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/IntOrder/A-68-284_en.pdf.
2013

People , Peace , Business

“Throughout my life, I have publicly and privately denounced military interventions in domestic politics. In fact, I have been advocating for democracy for decades. Having suffered through four military coups in four decades in Turkey — and having been subjected by those military regimes to harassment and wrongful imprisonment — I would never want my fellow citizens to endure such an ordeal again. If somebody who appears to be a Hizmet sympathizer has been involved in an attempted coup, he betrays my ideals.”

Fethullah Gülen (1941) Turkish preacher, former imam, writer, and political figure

"Fethullah Gulen: I Condemn All Threats to Turkey’s Democracy", 2016

Life , Suffering , Appearance

“Democracy is on trial in the world, on a more colossal scale than ever before.”

Charles Fletcher Dole (1845–1927) Unitarian minister, speaker, and writer

The Spirit of Democracy (1906).

World

“Education has a great part to play in assuring the intellectual and moral basis not only for citizenship of the state but also for that world citizenship which is the imperative need of the time. For education to serve the purposes of democracy and world citizenship it should it should be in a real sense “liberal.””

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

During his scholarly lecture tours as a philosopher, in Ghana, quoted in "Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar".

World , Education , Sense , Time

“Democracy unleashes the State in the name of the people.”

James Bovard (1956) American journalist

From Attention Deficit Democracy (Palgrave, 2006) http://www.jimbovard.com/Epigrams%20Attention%20Deficit%20Democracy.htm

People

“Many of my male colleagues who have suffered imprisonment for their part in the democracy movement have spoken of the great debt of gratitude they owe their womenfolk, particularly to their wives who stood by them firmly, tender as mothers nursing their newly born, brave as lionesses defending their young. These magnificent human beings who have done so much to aid their men in the struggle for justice and peace -- how much more could they not achieve if given the opportunity to work in their own right for the good of their country and of the world.”

Aung San Suu Kyi (1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy

Opening Keynote Address at NGO Forum on Women, Beijing China (1995)

Men , World , Peace , Justice

“It is sometimes admitted that many propositions that are affirmed by intelligent people, such as that democracy is the best form of government or that world peace depends upon world government, cannot be tested by the method of experimental science.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

People , World , Peace , Intelligence

“Democracy: everyone should have an equal opportunity to obstruct everybody else.”

Celia Green (1935) British philosopher

The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)

“After the war, Japan was occupied by the allied forces, and based on peace and democracy as values to be upheld, established the Constitution of Japan, undertook various reforms and built the foundation of Japan that we know today. I have profound gratitude for the efforts made by the Japanese people at the time who helped reconstruct and improve the country devastated by the war. I also feel that we must not forget the help extended to us in those days by Americans with an understanding of Japan and Japanese culture. Today, more than sixty years since the end of the war, we have seen that, in the face of major disasters such as the Great East Japan Earthquake [March 11, 2011], there are so many people in Japan who value the bonds between people, can deal with various situations calmly, and work hard towards reconstruction. I have found this most reassuring.”

Akihito (1933) Emperor of Japan

War , People , Peace , Feeling

“We had had the help during the past 20 months…of a number of Dominion statesmen. Our touch with those who guided the destinies of the Commonwealth was very close and constant. That was very right and necessary, because we were all engaged in the same great venture, we were all defending a common heritage—the cause of freedom and democracy. The links which united us with the free peoples of the Commonwealth proved their strength, and as we stood together in war so we should stand together in peace to create a new and better world.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the 65th anniversary luncheon of the United Wards' Club in the Connaught Rooms, London (23 February 1942), quoted in The Times (24 February 1942), p. 2.
War Cabinet

War , People , World , Peace

“Today, more than ever, it is critical for American citizens to understand the difference between the free-market capitalism that made our country great and the corporate cronyism that is now corrupting our political process, strangling democracy and devouring our national treasures.”

Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr. (1954) American activist

In "Crimes against nature" in Rolling Stone magazine (11 December 2003).

Understanding , Country

“If every one of those good words—liberty, equality, fraternity, democracy, human rights—has been called "bourgeois", what on earth does that leave for us?”

Fang Lizhi (1936–2012) Professor of astrophysics; civil rights activist and dissident

Obituary of Fang Lizhi http://www.economist.com/node/21552551, The Economist, 14th April 2012, p. 98

“We know, deep down, that repression is not the wave of the future. We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity. We know that free governments are the only way to ensure that the strong are just and the weak are valued. And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)

Hope , Way , Failure , Freedom

“While I suppose this means I’ll spend this Easter in Sedona rather than Siberia, I couldn’t be more proud of being sanctioned by Vladimir Putin for standing up for freedom and human rights for the Russian people and against Putin’s deadly aggression in Ukraine. I will never stop my efforts to support democracy, free speech, and the rule of law in Russia”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Remarks after being banned from entering Russia http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/john-mccain-russia-ban-116220.html#ixzz3bkitHxmA (3 March 2015)
2010s, 2015

People , Law , Support , Effort

“Democracy has to be judged not just by the institutions that formally exist but by the extent to which different voices from diverse sections of the people can actually be heard.”

Amartya Sen book The Idea of Justice

Source: 2000s, The Idea of Justice, 2009, p. xiii

People

“Peaceful nations must stand for the advance of democracy. No other system of government has done more to protect minorities, to secure the rights of labor, to raise the status of women, or to channel human energy to the pursuits of peace.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2004, Speech to United Nations General Assembly (September 2004)

Women , Peace

“It is time for those who love liberal democracy to join hands with Islam's reformists. Here is a clue to who's who: Moderate Muslims denounce violence committed in the name of Islam but insist that religion has nothing to do with it; reformist Muslims, by contrast, not only deplore Islamist violence but admit that our religion is used to incite it.”

Irshad Manji (1968) Feminist from Canada, author, journalist, activist

Irshad Manji: Islam Needs Reformists, Not 'Moderates' http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748703992704576305412360432744 The Wall Street Journal (7 May 2011)

Love , Religion , Time

“If a democracy cannot change its mind, it ceases to be a democracy.”

David Davis (1948) British Conservative Party politician and former businessman

David Davis MP speech "Europe: It's Time To Decide" http://www.daviddavismp.com/david-davis-mp-delivers-speech-on-the-opportunities-for-a-referendum-on-europe/ ( 19 November 2012 https://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2012/11/invitation-to-david-davis-lecture-on-europe.html)
On democracy and referendums

Change

“[For the Romans] an essential element of the Law of Nature is the equality of man, specifically, equality before the law, and the principle of human rights, including the rights to property, which antedated the state, and thus are independent of it. Fifteen hundred years later these ideas would furnish the philosophical cornerstone of Western democracy.”

Richard Pipes (1923–2018) American historian

Source: Property and Freedom (1999), p.12

Law , Idea , Nature

“This is a common criticism: the idea that the atheist is guilty of a literalist reading of scripture, and that it’s a very naive way of approaching religion, and there’s a far more sophisticated and nuanced view of religion on offer and the atheist is disregarding that. A few problems with this: anyone making that argument is failing to acknowledge just how many people really do approach these texts literally or functionally - whether they’re selective literalists, or literal all the way down the line. There are certain passages in scripture that just cannot be read figuratively. And people really do live by the lights of what is literally laid out in these books. So, the Koran says “hate the infidel” and Muslims hate the infidel because the Koran spells it out ad nauseam. Now, it’s true that you can cherry-pick scripture, and you can look for all the good parts. You can ignore where it says in Leviticus that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night you’re supposed to stone her to death on her father’s doorstep. Most religious people ignore those passages, which really can only be read literally, and say that “they were only appropriate for the time” and “they don’t apply now”. And likewise, Muslims try to have the same reading of passages that advocate holy war. They say “well, these were appropriate to those battles that Mohammed was fighting, but now we don’t have to fight those battles”. This is all a good thing, but we should recognize what’s happening here: people are feeling pressure from a host of all-too-human concerns that have nothing, in principle, to do with God: secularism, and human rights, and democracy, and scientific progress. These have made certain passages in scripture untenable. This is coming from outside religion, and religion is now making a great show of its sophistication in grappling with these pressures. This is an example of religion losing the argument with modernity.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris in interview by Big Think (04/07/2007) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zV3vIXZ-1Y&t=6s
2000s

Death , God , Hate , War

“What is striking here is the degree to which the Russians were willing to undertake such an audacious and risky action against the most powerful nation on earth. That ought to be a warning to us, that if we thought that the Russians would not dare to so blatantly interfere in our affairs, we were wrong. And if we do not do our very best to understand how the Russians accomplished this unprecedented attack on our democracy and what we need to do to protect ourselves in the future, we will have only ourselves to blame.”

Adam Schiff (1960) American politician

Open Letter to the Committee Hearing Re: FBI Director James Comey and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers

Understanding , Future

“The President of a great democracy such as ours, and the editors of great newspapers such as yours, owe a common obligation to the people: an obligation to present the facts, to present them with candor, and to present them in perspective.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors

People

“Israel has no better friend than America. And America has no better friend than Israel. We stand together to defend democracy. We stand together to advance peace. We stand together to fight terrorism. Congratulations America. Congratulations, Mister President. You got bin Laden. Good riddance!”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the U.S. Congress https://web.archive.org/web/20130704215008/http://www.jpost.com/Diplomacy-and-Politics/Text-of-PM-Binyamin-Netanyahus-speech-to-the-US-Congress (May 24, 2011).
2010s, 2011, Address to joint meeting of the U.S. Congress (May 2011)

Peace , Fight

“But foremost, I do not subscribe to the view that Islamic culture and democracy cannot be reconciled.”

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (1954) 12th President of Turkey from 2014

As quoted in Erdogan: "Democracy in the Middle East, PluralIism in Europe: Turkish View" http://www.turkishweekly.net/article/8/erdogan-democracy-in-the-middle-east-pluraliism-in-europe-turkish-view-.html, The Turkish Weekly (October 12, 2004)

“My dream is to organize a Christian political party including the Protestant denominations, Catholics and all the religious sects. Then, the communist power will be helpless before ours. We are going to do this because the communists are coming to the political scene. Before the pulpit, all the ministers of the established churches must give their sermon on how to smash or absorb communism — but they are not doing that. We are going to do this. Unless we lay the foundation for this, we cannot carry it out. In the Medieval Ages, they had to separate from the cities — statesmanship from the religious field — because people were corrupted at that time. But when it comes to our age, we must have an automatic theocracy to rule the world. So, we cannot separate the political field from the religious. Democracy was born because people ruled the world, like the Pope does. Then, we come to the conclusion that God has to rule the world, and God loving people have to rule the world — and that is logical. We have to purge the corrupted politicians, and the sons of God must rule the world. The separation between religion and politics is what Satan likes most.”

Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012) Korean religious leader

Master Speaks: The Significance of the Training Session (1973-05-17 http://www.tparents.org/Moon-Talks/sunmyungmoon73/SM730517.htm)
Note that the phrase "automatic theocracy" is seen within the church as a translation error. Mrs. Won Pok Choi, while translating the extemporaneous speech, compressed several minutes of Rev. Moon's exposition about the process by which the world would become transformed into the kingdom of heaven into this two-word phrase. Critics used to use this quote to "prove" their claim that Rev. Moon was dictatorial and anti-democratic, but Andrew Wilson had the recorded speech re-translated and exposed the discrepancy. Here is the word-for-word re-translation:[citation needed]
: What? Separate religion from politics? Why separate religion from politics? Why separate politics from religion? Can you separate God from politics? God is active in the realization of all human affairs. Therefore, when the democracies produce a succession of many uncorrupted politicians, it will become heaven on earth. Don't you agree that this is the way it should be?

Love , God , People , Age

“It’s premature to talk about working alongside General Musharraf at this stage, although in the past we have worked jointly on certain issues such as the Women’s Bill.
At the same time, I want you to know that we are also partners with Mr Nawaz Sharif in something called the charter for the restoration of democracy, so we are talking about a new democratic process in which the people of Pakistan are allowed to choose their leader and put together a coalition. And for that we are calling for a robust international monitoring team to ensure that these elections are fair and free because obviously if they’re not, the ruling party will still be in the driver’s seat and the creeping Talebanisation of Pakistan will continue.”

Benazir Bhutto (1953–2007) 11th Prime Minister of Pakistan

Destiny’s daughter (2007)

Women , People , Time , Past

“Now is the time for celebration, for South Africans to join together to celebrate the birth of democracy. I raise a glass to you all for working so hard to achieve what can only be called a small miracle. Let our celebrations be in keeping with the mood set in the elections, peaceful, respectful and disciplined, showing we are a people ready to assume the responsibilities of government.
I promise that I will do my best to be worthy of the faith and confidence you have placed in me and my organisation, the African National Congress. Let us build the future together, and toast a better life for all South Africans.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1990s, Victory speech (1994)

Life , People , Peace , Faith

“But if our democracy is to flourish it must have criticism, if our government is to function it must have dissent. Only totalitarian governments insist upon conformity and they—as we know—do so at their peril.”

Henry Steele Commager (1902–1998) American historian

Source: Freedom, Loyalty, Dissent (1954), p. 153

“Winning doesn't necessarily mean you're right. History will be a better judge of that. But that's the beauty of democracy — you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and as long as we're not hurting each other, that's fine. Placing a value judgement on a person's beliefs has no place in a democracy.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

"Chiz the whiz takes aim at the Upper House",The Philippine Daily Inquirer, 29 May 2005, p. Q1.
2005

Beauty , History , Hurt , Personality

“We are not the consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors.”

Raj Patel (1972) British academic

Ways to Counter the Excesses of the Market (24:00) http://fora.tv/2010/01/06/Raj_Patel_The_Value_of_Nothing#fullprogram FORA.tv

“People can go to the extreme like what we saw during the Cultural Revolution. For instance, in China, when people take everything into their own hands, then you cannot govern the place. … [It] was the people taking power into their own hands. Now that is what you mean by democracy if you take it to the full swing.”

Donald Tsang (1944) Hong Kong politician

As quoted in "HK's Tsang apologises for gaffe" at BBC News (13 October 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7042941.stm
Variant transcription or translation:
If you go to the extreme you have the cultural revolution for instance in China. Then people take everything into their hands, then you cannot govern the place. … It was people taking power into their own hands. This is what we mean by democracy.
As quoted in "Hong Kong leader apologises for democracy gaffe" at AFP (14 October 2007) http://web.archive.org/web/20070609092458/http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h_ytPeUlA7mXw3eMQ6WHSo_emsLw

People

“Imagine […] that thousands of armed foreign troops were constantly patrolling American streets in military vehicles. Imagine they were here under the auspices of "keeping us safe" or "promoting democracy" or "protecting their strategic interests." Imagine that they operated outside of US law, and that the Constitution did not apply to them. Imagine that every now and then they made mistakes or acted on bad information and accidentally killed or terrorized innocent Americans, including women and children, most of the time with little to no repercussions or consequences. Imagine that they set up checkpoints on our soil and routinely searched and ransacked entire neighborhoods of homes. Imagine if Americans were fearful of these foreign troops, and overwhelmingly thought America would be better off without their presence. Imagine if some Americans were so angry about them being in Texas that they actually joined together to fight them off, in defense of our soil and sovereignty, because leadership in government refused or were unable to do so. Imagine that those Americans were labeled terrorists or insurgents for their defensive actions, and routinely killed, or captured and tortured by the foreign troops on our land. Imagine that the occupiers' attitude was that if they just killed enough Americans, the resistance would stop, but instead, for every American killed, ten more would take up arms against them, resulting in perpetual bloodshed. […] The reality is that our military presence on foreign soil is as offensive to the people that live there as armed Chinese troops would be if they were stationed in Texas.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Imagine by Ron Paul http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul512.html (11 March 2009).
2000s, 2006-2009

Women , Children , People , Fear

“While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.”

Charles Evans Hughes (1862–1948) American judge

Statement of May 1908, quoted in "Reauthorization of The Civil Rights Division of The United States Department of Justice" (15 May 2003) US House of Representatives.

“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 book Manual of Political Economy

page 300.
Manual of Political Economy

Birth , Wealth

“The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots.”

Elbridge Gerry (1744–1814) US diplomat and vice president; Massachusetts governor

Constitutional Convention http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/debates_531.asp Monday May 31 [FN1], 1787

People , Evil

“The evident problem with democracy today is that the state is pre-empting – or 'crowding out', as the economists say – our moral judgments. Rulers are adding moral judgments to the expanding schedule of powers they exercise. Nor does the state deal merely with principles. It is actually telling its subjects to do very specific things. Yet decisions about how we live are what we mean by 'freedom,' and freedom is incompatible with a moralizing state. That is why I am provoked to ask the question: can the moral life survive democracy?”

Kenneth Minogue (1930–2013) Australian political theorist

Introduction p. 3-4
The Servile Mind: How Democracy Erodes the Moral Life

Life , Exercises , Question , Problem

“For some reason which escapes me, there seems to be a feeling now that we have a moral duty to interfere in foreign disputes, and tell other countries how they should govern themselves, especially if so-called democracy is thought to be in danger.”

George MacDonald Fraser (1925–2008) English-born author of Scottish descent

The Day of the Pygmies. p. 91-92.
The Light's On At Signpost (2002)

Feeling , Country

“If the multitude does not understand or understands only with difficulty several laws that are immediately necessary to its life, how can it be imagined by someone that it -which in a democracy must be led through itself-could understand the most difficult natural laws; or that it would know intuitively the most subtle and imperceptible norms of human leadership, norms that project beyond itself, its life, its life's necessities, or which do not apply directly to it but to a more superior entity, the nation?”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Politics

Life , Law , Imagination , Understanding

“And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions—students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,—might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), The Present Time (February 1, 1850)

Men , Children , Universe , Personality

“Jimmy O’Brien brought the manufacture of “Democracies” down to an exact science, and reduced the cost of production so as to bring it within the reach of all. Any man with $50 can now have a “Democracy” of his own. p. 58”

George Washington Plunkitt (1842–1924) New York State Senator

Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, Chapter 14 Tammany the Only Lastin’ Democracy

Science

“Even in Scandinavia, where social democratic institutions were far more culturally ingrained, membership of the EU—or even just participation in the World Trade Organization and other international agencies—appeared to constrain locally-initiated legislation. In short, social democracy seemed doomed by that same internationalization which its early theorists had so enthusiastically adumbrated as the future of capitalism.
From this perspective, social democracy—like liberalism—was a byproduct of the rise of the European nation-state: a political idea keyed to the social challenges of industrialization in developed societies. Not only was there no ‘socialism’ in America, but social democracy as a working compromise between radical goals and liberal traditions lacked widespread support in any other continent. There was no shortage of enthusiasm for revolutionary socialism in much of the non-Western world, but the distinctively European compromise did not export well.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Conclusion: What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?

World , Idea , Support , Appearance

“For the world to follow, we must do more than rattle our sabers and demand allegienace to our vision simply because we believe we are right. We must provide a reason for others to aspire to that vision. And that reason must come with more than the repetition of a bumper-sticker phrase about freedom and democracy. It must come with more than the restatement of failed policy. It must come with the wisdom to admit when we are wrong and resolve to change course and get it right.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 353
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Wisdom , World , Freedom , Change

“Islamic state means a state based on justice and democracy and structured upon Islamic rules and laws.”

Ruhollah Khomeini (1902–1989) Religious leader, politician

Imam's Sahife, vol. 5, p. 133. (17 December 1978)
Foreign policy

Justice , Law

“As Commissar for the Armed Forces and a member of the Politburo he [Trotsky] still appeared powerful, but by 1923 he was isolated and helpless. All his former tergiversations were turned against him. When he came to realize his situation he attacked the bureaucratization of the party and the stifling of intra-party democracy: like all overthrown Communist leaders he became a democrat as soon as he was ousted from power. However, it was easy for Stalin and Zinovyev to show not only that Trotsky’ s democratic sentiments and indignation at party bureaucracy were of recent date, but that he himself, when in power, had been a more extreme autocrat than anyone else: he had supported or initiated every move to protect party "unity", had wanted – contrary to Lenin’ s policy – to place the trade unions under state control and to subject the whole economy to the coercive power of the police, and so on. In later years Trotsky claimed that the policy, which he had supported, of prohibiting "fractions" was envisaged as an exceptional measure and not a permanent principle. But there is no proof that this was so, and nothing in the policy itself suggests that it was meant to be temporary. It may be noted that Zinovyev showed more zeal than Stalin in condemning Trotsky – at one stage he was in favour of arresting him – and thus supplied Stalin with useful ammunition when the two ousted leaders tried, belatedly and hopelessly, to join forces against their triumphant rival.”

Leszek Kolakowski (1927–2009) Philosopher, historian of ideas

pg. 21
Main Currents Of Marxism (1978), Three Volume edition, Volume III: The Breakdown

Support , Appearance

“You know that we are now allowing free expression of satirical thoughts. As they say, democracy is a beautiful thing, but humanity couldn't come up with anything worse than that.”

Yurii Andrukhovych book The Moscoviad

The Moscoviad
Source: The Moscoviad. Yuri Andrukhovych. Spuyten Duyvil, New York City. ISBN1933132523, p. 130

Beauty

“Unfortunately, pragmatism is not always good politics. The greatest asset of mid-20th century social democracy—its willingness to compromise its own core beliefs in the name of balance, tolerance, fairness and freedom—now looks more like weakness: a loss of nerve in the face of changed circumstances. We find it hard to look past those compromises to recall the qualities that informed progressive thought in the first place: what the early 20th century syndicalist Edouard Berth termed “a revolt of the spirit against... a world in which man was threatened by a monstrous moral and metaphysical materialism.””

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 4 : Goodbye to All That?

World , Freedom , Change , Loss

“In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.”

Max Weber (1864–1920) German sociologist, philosopher, and political economist

Source: From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (1946), p. 42;

People , Business

“The U. S. is a very democratic state. There's no doubt about that. And it originally developed as a democratic state. When the first settlers set their foot on the continent, life forced them to forge a relationship and maintain a dialogue with each other to survive. That's why America was conceived as a fundamental democracy.”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Interview http://web.archive.org/web/20130614041959/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33oIF-ggK5U (2013).
2011 - 2015

Life

“I always maintain that the great service that education renders to democracy is the same service that we hope to gain from religion. They work, or ought to work, hand in hand. It is to keep the moral weights and measures true to standard; and not only true to standard—true to the highest standard. And let us have that applied impartially to all classes of the community from the top to the bottom. There are those who would empty the conception of the state of all moral qualities, and they would confine education to a bread-and-butter business. If I may paraphrase Nurse Cavell's dying words, such patriotism is not enough. Moral standards, applied as I suggest, are the surest way to achieve that fundamental social unity which is postulated by democracy.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Canadian Club in Toronto (6 August 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), pp. 79-80.
1927

Education , Religion , Hope , Way

“Because wisdom in action in our Western democracies rests squarely upon public understanding, I have long believed that our schools have a key role to play. Peace could, I believe, be advanced through careful study of all the factors which have gone into the various incidents now historical that have marked the breakdown of peace in the past. As an initial procedure our schools, at least our colleges but preferably our senior high schools, as we call them, should have courses which not merely instruct our budding citizens in the historical sequence of events of the past, but which treat with almost scientific accuracy the circumstances which have marked the breakdown of peace and have led to the disruption of life and the horrors of war.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

Essentials to Peace (1953)

Life , Wisdom , War , School

“I find it hard to swallow that I have only ten times more genes than those lowly bacteria in my gut. I had always liked the fact that they have ten thousand times less DNA than I did — that felt about right — but a factor of ten was carrying democracy a bit too far.”

Gottfried Schatz (1936–2015) biochemist

Jeff's view on science and scientists (Amsterdam, Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann, 2006, ISBN 0-444-52133-X, pbk.), Ch. 3: "Me and my genome" (p. 22).

Time

“Turkey serves as an anchor of democracy, freedom, and stability in a region in turmoil. Your own Thomas Paine once wrote, 'Those who, expect to reap the blessings of freedom must… undergo the fatigue of supporting it.' Let me say that in Turkey, we do not feel fatigued by our support of the Western allies because we know that by supporting the allies, we may all continue to reap the blessings of freedom.”

Kenan Evren (1917–2015) Turkish general

US Department of State Bulletin, Sept, 1988 http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1079/is_n2138_v88/ai_6813102/pg_2?tag=artBody;col1
From a statement made in a joint press conference with Ronald Regan during the Turkish president's 1988 trip to Washington, D.C.

Pain , Feeling , Support , Freedom

“I grew up in Hungary, lived through fascism and the Holocaust, and then had a foretaste of communism. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of government prevails. I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society. When I had made more money than I needed for myself and my family, I set up a foundation to promote the values and principles of a free and open society.”

George Soros (1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

Why We Must Not Reelect President Bush (2004)

Money , Age , Family , Home

“Many people, no doubt, honestly believe that they are only giving away the interests of Czechoslovakia, whereas I fear we shall find that we have deeply compromised, and perhaps fatally endangered, the safety and even the independence of Great Britain and France. … You have to consider the character of the Nazi movement and the rule which it implies. The Prime Minister desires to see cordial relations between this country and Germany. There is no difficulty at all in having cordial relations with the German people. Our hearts go out to them. But they have no power. You must have diplomatic and correct relations, but there can never be friendship between the British democracy and the Nazi Power, that Power which spurns Christian ethics, which cheers its onward course by a barbarous paganism, which vaunts the spirit of aggression and conquest, which derives strength and perverted pleasure from persecution, and uses, as we have seen, with pitiless brutality the threat of murderous force. That Power cannot ever be the trusted friend of the British democracy.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/oct/05/policy-of-his-majestys-government#column_370 in the House of Commons (5 October 1938) against the Munich Agreement
The 1930s

Friendship , People , Pleasure , Fear

“Prior to all overturns of XX century, without an exception, Russian opposition has accused authorities in "transferring funds to abroad". And in all cases in turned out to be void propaganda — from 1914-1917 to 1991. And money were transferred later, after the revolution, under brands of "people's power" and "won democracy". The only real way of plundering through "transfer of funds" is change of political system, which would transform into zeroing of all governmental promissory notes. As soon as Russia will become "Other Russia", all the property will turn out to be transferred, "nobody's". And people will be informed, that "previous power has eaten all".”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

Money , People , Way , Change

“World Encyclopaedia. -- Behind these lies another prospect of greater and more permanent importance; that of an attempt at a comprehensive and continually revised presentation of the whole of science in its social context, an idea most persuasively put forward by H. G. Wells in his appeal for a World Encyclopaedia of which he has already given us a foretaste in his celebrated outlines. The encyclopaedic movement was a great rallying point of the liberal revolution of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The real encyclopaedia should not be what the Encyclopaedia Britannica has degenerated into, a mere mass of unrelated knowledge sold by high-pressure salesmanship, but a coherent expression of the living and changing body of thought; it should sum up what is for the moment the spirit of the age…
The original French Encyclopaedia which did attempt these things was, however, made in the period of relative quiet when the forces of liberation were gathering ready to break their bonds. We have already entered the second period of revolutionary struggle and the quiet thought necessary to make such an effort will not be easy to find, but some effort is worth making because the combined assault on science and humanity by the forces of barbarism has against it, as yet, no general and coherent statement on the part of those who believe in democracy and the need for the people of the world to take over the active control of production and administration for their own safety and welfare.”

John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971) British scientist

Source: The Social Function of Science (1939), p. 306-307. Chapter SCIENTIFIC COMMUNICATION. The Function of Scientific Publication. See also World Brain

People , Age , World , Idea

“This is a new government, a new environment in that sense. The change of democracy happened peacefully. The harmony that we show and practice is important.”

Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (1952) Malaysian politician

Wan Azizah Wan Ismail (2018) cited in " China and Malaysia ties continue to prosper: Wan Azizah http://www.thesundaily.my/news/2018/07/21/china-and-malaysia-ties-continue-prosper-wan-azizah" on The Sun Daily, 21 July 2018

Sense , Change

“This Australia of ours is a vast island continent inhabited largely by people of British or other European stock and with a heritage of national freedom, personal liberty and the institutions of a British parliamentary democracy. But geographically we are part of Asia, and increasingly we have become aware of our involvement in the affairs of Asia. Our greatest dangers and our highest hopes are centred in Asia's tomorrows. Already one Asian country [Japan] has become established as the largest purchaser, in terms of money value, of Australian exports. The only military operations in which we are now engaged or in which we have been engaged since the Second World War are located in Asia.”

Harold Holt (1908–1967) Australian politician, 17th Prime Minister of Australia

address to federal parliament after returning from a tour of Asia, 12 April 1967
As prime minister
Source: http://pmtranscripts.pmc.gov.au/sites/default/files/original/00001559.pdf

Money , War , People , World

“The foundation of democracy is the sense of spiritual independence which nerves the individual to stand alone against the powers of this world.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

Part IV, Ch. 4
Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (1926)

World , Sense

“Let us by all means teach black history, African history, women’s history, Hispanic history, Asian history. But let us teach them as history, not as filiopietistic commemoration. The purpose of history is to promote not group self-esteem, but understanding of the world and the past, dispassionate analysis, judgment, and perspective, respect for divergent cultures and traditions, and unflinching protection for those unifying ideas of tolerance, democracy, and human rights that make free historical inquiry possible.”

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. book The Disuniting of America

The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society (New York: W W Norton, 1998) p. 104

Women , World , History , Idea

“Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.”

Harlan F. Stone (1872–1946) United States federal judge

Reported in Alpheus Thomas Mason, Harlan Fiske Stone, Pillar of the Law (1956), p. 95.

“Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

"Gods and Greens" (1989)
1990s, A View from the Diner's Club (1991)

“The case for reviving the state does not rest uniquely upon its contributions to modern society as a collective project; there is a more urgent consideration. We have entered an age of fear. Insecurity is once again an active ingredient of political life in Western democracies. Insecurity born of terrorism, of course; but also, and more insidiously, fear of the uncontrollable speed of change, fear of the loss of employment, fear of losing ground to others in an increasingly unequal distribution of resources, fear of losing control of the circumstances and routines of our daily life. And, perhaps above all, fear that it is not just we who can no longer shape our lives but that those in authority have also lost control, to forces beyond their reach.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 6 : The Shape of Things to Come

Life , Age , Fear , Change

“Israel, our great friend and the one true democracy in the Middle East has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity… President Obama has not been a friend to Israel. He has treated Iran with tender love and care and made it a great power.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2016, April, Foreign Policy Speech (27 April 2016)

Love

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Speech to the Negro American Labor Council (May 1965), as quoted in From Civil Rights to Human Rights : Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice (2009), by Thomas F. Jackson, p. 230
1960s

God , Children , Country , Wealth