Quotes about democracy (2106 quotes, page 15)

“Our purpose is not — and shall never be-either the quest for power or the desire to punish. We seek to increase the power of the people over all their governments, not to enhance the power of the Federal Government over any of the people. For the life of this Republic, our people have zealously guarded their liberty against abuses of power by their governments. The one weapon they have used is the mightiest weapon in the arsenal of democracy — the vote. This has been enough, for as Woodrow Wilson said, "The instrument of all reform in America is the ballot."”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, Special message to Congress on the right to vote (1965)

Life , People

“Under a socialist system every nation will be the supreme arbiter of its own destinies, national and international; will be forced into no alliance against its will, but will have its independence guaranteed and its freedom respected by the enlightened self-interest of the socialist democracy of the world.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

in Samuel Levenson, James Connolly (Martin, Brian and O'Keeffe, London, 1973), p. 56.

World , Freedom

“In the past ten years unarmed gallant men and women of the United States have given living testimony to the moral power and efficacy of nonviolence. By the thousands, faceless, anonymous, relentless young people, black and white, have temporarily left the ivory towers of learning for the barricades of bias. Their courageous and disciplined activities have come as a refreshing oasis in a desert sweltering with the heat of injustice. They have taken our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the founding fathers in the formulation of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. One day all of America will be proud of their achievements.”

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

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)

Women , Men , People , Courage

“A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of Government, have erroneously supposed, that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Federalist No. 10
1780s, Federalist Papers (1787–1788)

Death , Communication , Passion , Time

“We go about the world, fighting to spread democracy and tell them how to live, but we really don't have a democratic system… The laws have been made to make it very difficult, because the Republicans and the Democrats aren't looking for the competition, they want to monopolize it. So in many ways, we are less democratic than some other systems, where they have multiple parties, and more people represented than they're able to be represented here.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Laura Knoy on NHPR, June 5, 2007 http://info.nhpr.org/node/13016
2000s, 2006-2009

People , World , Law , Way

“Government programs once established never end, they just never end. The logic is evermore decision made by government and ever fewer decisions made by individuals. Democracy is an extraordinary thing, but Hitler could've been elected democratically. Democracy is not the same as liberty. It is not the same as individual rights.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011), Q&A

Decision

“As far as domestic democracy, all here present know that democracy means government of the people by the people. While we agree that consultation and participation are essential to every democracy, this is seldom achieved in practice.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Statement by the Independent Expert on the Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order, Prof. Dr. Alfred de Zayas. Brussels Conference on a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, 16/17 October 2013 http://www.unpacampaign.org/documents/en/2013UNPA_zayas.pdf.
2014, UNPA - World Parliamentary Assembly

People

“…because we don't have a Fairness Doctrine, and because we have further media consolidation, and because we have a craptastic corporate media, WE DON'T HAVE NEWS! We don't have an informed populous and we don't have a democracy… Everyone in the world knows that America, (in its current state, because of right-wingers) that the right wing arm of this country (that speaks for this country unfortunately) has no credibility when it comes to human rights or independent media.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

Majority Report, April 21, 2005 broadcast
Majority Report

World , Country

“The shattering of modern culture is the result, on the plane of ideological struggle, of the chaotic crisis of these antagonisms. The new desires that are taking shape are presented in distorted form: present-day resources could enable them to be fulfilled, but the anachronistic economic structure is incapable of developing these resources to such ends. Ruling-class ideology has meanwhile lost all coherence because of the depreciation of its successive conceptions of the world (a depreciation which leads the ruling class to historical indecision and uncertainty); because of the coexistence of a range of mutually contradictory reactionary ideologies (such as Christianity and social-democracy); and because of the mixing into contemporary Western culture of a number of only recently appreciated features of several foreign civilizations. The main goal of ruling-class ideology is therefore to maintain this confusion.”

Guy Debord (1931–1994) French Marxist theorist, writer, filmmaker and founding member of the Situationist International (SI)

Report on the Construction of Situations (1957)

World , Success , Indecision

“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

XVIII, p. 483. Usually misquoted as "Democracy…while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy".
1810s, Letters to John Taylor (1814)

“For those of us who grew up believing that capitalism is the foundation of democracy and market freedom, it has been a rude awakening to realize that under capitalism, democracy is for sale to the highest bidder and the market is centrally planned by global megacorporations larger than most states.”

David Korten (1937) writer, sustainability advocate

The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism (2012)

Freedom

“Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Speech to the 27th Party Congress, Moscow (25 February 1986)
1980s

Life

“Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

as quoted in Straight Through the Heart: How the Liberals Abandoned the Just Society (Harper and Collins: 1995), p. 243.

People , Fear

“[Fascism] is not a sign-post which would direct us here, for I firmly believe that our long experienced democracy will be able to preserve a parliamentary system of government with whatever modifications may be necessary from both extremes of arbitrary rule.”

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

Speech to the Anti-Socialist and Anti-Communist Union (17 February 1933), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 457
The 1930s

“The Social Democratic movement need have no fear in regard to the political activity of Trotsky. On the contrary, he is more likely to give the death blow to the Communist movement outside Russia and to induce the Communist workers to return to Social Democracy than to strengthen any Communist Party or to weaken the Social Democrats in any way.”

Fyodor Dan (1871–1947) Russian revolutionary

Ibid. p. 621.

Death , Fear , Way

“The greatest way to defend democracy is to make it work.”

Tommy Douglas (1904–1986) Scottish-born Canadian politician

Address, Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, Saskatoon, March 13, 1951.

Way

“Our nation should always derive its character directly from the people and let this be the strength and the image to be presented to the world — the character of the American people.
To our friends and allies I say that what unites us through our common dedication to democracy is much more important than that which occasionally divides us on economics or politics. To the nations that seek to lift themselves from poverty I say that America shares your aspirations and extends its hand to you. To those nation-states that wish to compete with us I say that we neither fear competition nor see it as an obstacle to wider cooperation. To all people I say that after two hundred years America still remains confident and youthful in its commitment to freedom and equality, and we always will be.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Pre-Presidency, First Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech (1976)

People , Youth , World , Fear

“We used to think that secrecy was perhaps the greatest enemy of democracy, and as long as there was no suppression or censorship, people could be trusted to make the informed decisions that would preserve our free society, but we have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

People , Truth , Thinking , Decision

“The suggestions of the shrewdest Democratic papers have proved unavailing in controlling the votes of the loyal whites and blacks of the south. Their innuendoes have been evaded. The people emphatically decline to dispose of their rights for a mess of pottage. In this particular the Democracy of the North found themselves foiled and their money needless. But with a spirit more demon-like than that of a Nero or a Caligula, there has been concocted another plan, destructive, ay, diabolical in its character, worthy only of hearts without regard for god or man, fit for such deeds as those deserving the name of men would shudder to perform. Is it asked, what are those deeds? Let those who liberally contributed to the supply of arms and ammunition in the late rebellious States answer the question. Soon after the close of the war there had grown up in the south a very widely-spread willingness to comply with the requirements of the law. But as the clemency and magnanimity of the general government became manifest once again did the monster rebellion lift its hydra head in renewed defiance, cruel and cowardly, fearing the light of day, hiding itself under the shadow of the night as more befitting its bloody and accursed work.”

Joseph Hayne Rainey (1832–1887) politician

1871, Speech on the the Ku Klux Klan Bill of 1871 (1 April 1871)

Men , Money , God , War

“The dictator Powers of Europe are striding on from strength to strength and from stroke to stroke, and the parliamentary democracies are retreating abashed and confused. … Austria has been laid in thrall, and we do not know whether Czechoslovakia will not suffer a similar attack. … It is because we have lost these opportunities of standing firm, of having strong united forces and a good heart, and a resolute desire to defend the right and afterwards to do generously as the result of strength; it is because we have lost these successive opportunities which have presented themselves, that, when our resources are less and the dangers greater, we have been brought to this pass. I predict that the day will come when at some point or other on some issue or other you will have to make a stand, and I pray God that when that day comes we may not find that through an unwise policy we are left to make that stand alone.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1938/feb/22/foreign-affairs#S5CV0332P0_19380222_HOC_332 in the House of Commons (22 February 1938) after the resignation of the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden
The 1930s

God , Strong , Suffering , Success

“Today Israel and India are embattled democracies, sharing values and the challenge of terrorism. United in our quest for life, liberty and peace our joint determination to fight for these values can inspire our hopes for a better future for our people.”

Ariel Sharon (1928–2014) prime minister of Israel and Israeli general

Sharon pays homage to Mahatma Gandhi, 9 September 2003, http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/sep/09sharon2.htm
2000s

Life , People , Peace , Hope

“The substance of socialist democracy lies in efficient socialist organisation of all society for the sake of every individual, and in the socialist discipline of every individual for the sake of all society.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Soviet Socialist Democracy http://leninist.biz/en/1968/SSD255/4.6-The.Main.Duties.of.Soviet.Citizens

“The united vote of those who toil and have not will vanquish those who have and toil not, and solve forever the problems of democracy.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

Problem

“Here is tragedy—and here is America. For the curse of the country, as well of all democracies, is precisely the fact that it treats its best men as enemies. The aim of our society, if it may be said to have an aim, is to iron them out. The ideal American, in the public sense, is a respectable vacuum.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"More Tips for Novelists" in the Chicago Tribune (2 May 1926)
1920s

Men , Sense , Country

“The DMZ does not divide the last bastion of communism from a liberal democracy; it divides a radical nationalist state from a moderate nationalist one.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

"North Korea, Nuclear Armament, and Unification" http://sthelepress.com/index.php/2017/07/03/north-korea-nuclear-armament-and-unification/ (21 July 2017)
2010s

Communication

““The innovative ideas of social democracy are emerging in other forums, in the networks of creative small business and social entrepreneurs.””

Mark Latham (1961) Australian politician

Unsourced

Idea , Business

“We did not suspend our democracy in our darkest hours why are we suspending it now? the fawning over Thatcher had gone too far. We have had enough of this, It has gone on too long and it has gone too far. This put the tin hat on it the idea that we should suspend a vital part of our democratic process for a party political and private funeral, Mr Churchill didn’t ask for Parliament to be silenced, for confrontations across the House to be forbidden. When our soldiers were being laid waste in the Norway debate, the House of Commons perhaps rose to its finest 20th Century moment. Nobody said: ‘Our armed forces have suffered a disaster, the House of Commons cannot meet, the clash of ideas cannot be heard, we must muffle the drums and silence ourselves The so-called Beast of Bolsover said the argument was about class and that it was "one rule for those at the top and another for those at the bottom. We are here talking about the thing that we sometimes suggest has gone away class, That's what it is, it's about class. It's about the fact that people out there have to live their lives in a different way and there's one rule for those at the top and there's another for those at the bottom. It's never changed, I wish it had, but it hasn't. So when I heard about the chain of events it seemed to grow like topseed - first of all there was going to be some sort of ceremonial funeral, and then the next thing you (Mr Speaker) tell us that the chimes of Big Ben are going to stop and then we hear about the fact that we are going to abandon Prime Minister's question time, I mean, what's it all about? That's why the people out there are angry, a lot of them.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-fawning-gone-far-1836314 George Galloway blasts cancellation of PMQs for Margret Thatchers funeral 16 April, 2013

People , Way , Idea , Question

“Indian nationalism is the nationalism of an idea, the idea of an ever-ever land, emerging from an ancient civilization, shaped by a shared history, sustained by pluralist democracy.”

Shashi Tharoor (1956) Indian politician, diplomat, author

The 125th Anniversary Jubilee Lecture, St. Stephen's College, Delhi, November 12 2005, "India: from Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond" Available Online http://www.shashitharoor.com/books/midnight/lecture.html
2000s

History , Idea

“The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Z Magazine, May 1998 http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199805--.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999

Way , Decision

“America does not at the moment have a functioning democracy.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Referring to mass surveillance by the government in the United States.[NSA Controversy: Jimmy Carter Says U.S. "Has No Functioning Democracy", International Business Times, July 18, 2013, http://www.ibtimes.com/nsa-controversy-jimmy-carter-says-us-has-no-functioning-democracy-1351389, 8-11-2013]
[NSA-Affäre: Ex-Präsident Carter verdammt US-Schnüffelei, Der Speigel, July 17, 2013, http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/nsa-affaere-jimmy-carter-kritisiert-usa-a-911589.html, 8-11-2013]
Post-Presidency

“Wherever democracy has prevailed, the power of the State has been used in some form or other to plunder the well-to-do classes for the benefit of the poor.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Quarterly Review, 107, 1860, p. 524
1860s

“A unique opportunity has opened up in Kyrgyzstan to deal with democracy. We started to go toward democracy, and it was interrupted. Now there is a chance to come back to democracy, and in half a year my interim government should prepare elections — open and transparent elections — and we should pass a constitution based on political agreement between the parties. We have quite a task.”

Roza Otunbayeva (1950) Soviet diplomat

"The Situation Is Not Easy" by Lally Weymouth in Newsweek (26 April 2010) http://www.newsweek.com/id/236580/output/print

Chance

“Complaints about the damage done to our "democracy" by outsiders are worse than silly. Such damage pales compared to what we Americans have done to a compact rooted in the consent of the governed and the drastically limited and delimited powers of those who govern.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

" Whodunit? Who Meddled With Out Democracy? http://www.wnd.com/2018/02/whodunit-who-meddled-with-our-democracy/" February 8, 2018, WND.com.
2010s, 2018

“We are at an extraordinary moment in human history: never before has the possibility of true democracy been so close to realisation. At the cost of publishing and duplication has dropped to near zero, a truly free press, and a truly informed public, becomes a reality. A new Information Enlightment is dawning where knowledge flows freely, beyond national boundaries. Technology is breaking down traditional social barriers of status, class, power, wealth and geography, replacing them with an ethos of collaboration and transparency. In this new Enlightenment it isn't just scientific truths that are the goal, but discovering truths about the way we live, about politics and power.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page ix.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

Truth , Way , History , Knowledge

“There are two kinds of freedom to be found in our world: the freedom of desires, and the freedom from desires. Our modern Western culture only recognizes the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constitutions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realize their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires. It is remarkable that in such abstemious communities like my monastery, people feel free.”

Ajahn Brahm (1951) Buddhist monk

Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung (2005).

People , World , Peace , Feeling

“A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic — not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so.”

Azar Nafisi book Reading Lolita in Tehran

Reading Lolita in Tehran (2003)

Way , Nature

“The group process contains the secret of collective life, it is the key to democracy, it is the master lesson for every individual to learn, it is our chief hope or the political, the social, the international life of the future.”

Mary Parker Follett The New State

Source: The New State, 1918, p. 23

Life , Secret , Hope , Learning

“Plausible as the idea of the United States of Europe as a peace arrangement may seem to some at first glance, it has on closer examination not the least thing in common with the method of thought and the standpoint of social democracy... At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. Europe no more forms a special unit within world economy than does Asia or America.”

Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919) Polish Marxist theorist, socialist philosopher, and revolutionary

Peace Utopias (1911)

World , Peace , Idea

“Heckling “tunes people out of their democracy,” she says”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

The Walrus interview (2012)

People

“One man, one vote: A legal doctrine requiring that, from time to time, old gerrymanders be replaced with new ones. The object of this is the achievement of genuine democracy.”

Poul Anderson book There Will Be Time

Source: There Will Be Time (1972), Chapter 3 (p. 30)

Time

“The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

1910s, Address to Congress on War (1917)

World , Peace

“What is the democratic peace? In the literature on or referring to the democratic peace, this means the idea or fact that democracies do not (or virtually never) make war on each other.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“What Is The Democratic Peace?” https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/DP.IS_WHAT.HTM

War , Peace , Literature , Idea

“[E]mancipation cannot be so easily detached from union (which is another way of saying that racial justice and liberal democracy rise or fall with each other).”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

Source: 2010s, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), p. xviii

Justice , Way

“In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy and the market economy.”

David Korten (1937) writer, sustainability advocate

The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism (2012)

Communication

“People are always teaching us democracy but the people who teach us democracy don't want to learn it themselves.”

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

MUNICH, February 10, 2007. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/02/a50c8a12-b6a8-44ad-92dd-58183e78a032.html
2006- 2010

People , Learning

“Democracies don’t murder their citizens.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: Power Kills: Democracy as a Method of Nonviolence(1997), p. 95

“It is an irony of the country’s political situation that while untouchability in the social field is considered to be evil, it is sometimes extolled as a virtue in the political field. If a party does not wish to practise untouchability towards its rivals in the political establishment, it is supposed to be doing something wrong. We, in the Jana Sangh, certainly do not agree with the communists’ strategy, tactics and their political culture. But that does not justify an attitude of untouchability towards them. If they are willing to work with us on the basis of issues, or as part of a government committed to an agreed programme, I see nothing wrong in it…. These (SVD) governments are a step towards ending political untouchability. The spirit of accommodation shown by all parties, despite their sharp differences, is a good omen for democracy.”

Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916–1968) RSS thinker and co-founder of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh

Deendayalji’s speech at the Calicut session of the Jana Sangh, 1967., quoted in L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008)

Evil , Parting , Country

“Where my Guards appear, there is no room for democracy.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Speech to representatives of German political parties (20 July 1917), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), pp. 379-380
1910s

Appearance

“Ultimately there are but three systems of ethics, three conceptions of the ideal character and the moral life. One is that of Buddha and Jesus, which stresses the feminine virtues, considers all men to be equally precious, resists evil only by returning good, identifies virtue with love, and inclines in politics to unlimited democracy. Another is the ethic of Machiavelli and Nietzsche, which stresses the masculine virtues, accepts the inequality of men, relishes the risks of combat and conquest and rule, identifies virtue with power, and exalts an hereditary aristocracy. A third, the ethic of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, denies the universal applicability of either the feminine or the masculine virtues; considers that only the informed and mature mind can judge, according to diverse circumstance, when love should rule, and when power; identifies virtue, therefore, with intelligence; and advocates a varying mixture of aristocracy and democracy in government. It is the distinction of Spinoza that his ethic unconsciously reconciles these apparently hostile philosophies, weaves them into a harmonious unity, and gives us in consequence a system of morals which is the supreme achievement of modern thought.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961)
A - F

Love , Life , Men , Hostility

“Democracies should be a delirium of choices - more options, not fewer; more avenues to travel, not fewer.”

B. W. Powe (1955) Canadian writer

A Prayer For Canada, p. 5
Towards a Canada of Light (2006)

Travel

“He says to the Sovereign: "I no longer am leader of the majority party in the House of Commons; but I am carrying on as your Prime Minister." Now I don't think anyone can say that—at least without inflicting damage on the constitution… [it is] tantamount to treating the monarch herself with disrespect and denying the very principle on which our parliamentary democracy is founded.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

On John Major's decision to resign as party leader in order to contest a leadership election (The Daily Mail, 27 June, 1995).
1990s

Thinking , Housing

“Democracy is a form of leading state in which the right and power in the hands of the people as a permanent. To ensure that the right and power is in the hands of people permanently, it must have a system to ensure the balance of power between citizens with its representatives.”

Khem Veasna (1971) Cambodian politician

Multi-Parties political platform (25 June 2013)

People

“In all ages, whatever the form and name of government, be it monarchy, republic, or democracy, an oligarchy lurks behind the façade….”

Ronald Syme book The Roman Revolution

The Roman Revolution ([1939] 2002), Introduction.

Age

“Deep Democracy is our sense that the world is here to help us to become our entire selves, and that we are here to help the world to become whole.”

Arnold Mindell (1940) American psychologist

Mindell, A. (1992). The Leader as Martial Artist: An Introduction to Deep Democracy (1st ed.). San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.

World , Sense , Help

“A spurious democracy has influenced both our research methods (I am sometimes tempted to define “validity” as part of the context of an experiment demanding so little in the way of esoteric gift that any number can play at it, provided they have taken a certain number of courses) and our research subjects”

David Riesman (1909–2002) American Sociologist

it would be deemed snobbish to investigate only the best people
“Clinical and Cultural Aspects of the Aging Process,” p. 485
Individualism Reconsidered (1954)

People , Way , Parting

“Capitalism is a system in which many scarce resources are owned privately, and decisions about allocating them are a private prerogative. Democracy is a system through which people as citizens may express preferences about allocating resources that they do not privately own. Hence the perennial question of political theory and of practical politics concerns the competence of these two systems with regard to each other. Is it possible for governments to control a capitalist economy? In particular, is it possible to steer the economy against the interests and preferences of those who control productive wealth?”

Adam Przeworski (1940) Polish-American academic

Adam Przeworski and Michael Wallerstein, The American Political Science Review (Mar., 1988)

People , Question , Decision , Wealth

“We should know that only replacing the economics of competition and greed with the economics of equitable cooperation will guarantee a globalization that takes advantage of potential efficiency gains in ways that also promote environmental protection, international equity, economic democracy, and variety.”

Robin Hahnel (1946) American economist

Source: Panic Rules!: Everything You Need to Know about the Global Economy, 1999, p. 105-6

Way

“This new party was made up of Northern men from the ruins of the old Whig party, the Free-Soil Democracy and all friends of true republican liberty who desired to see the Sham Democracy overthrown, and the National Government brought back to the principles of Washington and Jefferson and the fathers of the Republic.”

Elbridge G. Spaulding (1809–1897) American politician

Remarks on the Republican platform (1860)

Men

“Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 29.

“Transparency strengthens democracy only when it gives citizens information they can use. It is not just about politicians telling us what they want us to know. For it to mean anything, it must empower citizens and provide answers to the questions they ask, not merely spoon feed them meagre information rations.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Attributed, In the Media

Question

“We Canadians think that Canada is a modern, well informed democracy. We look down our noses at the dumbed down content on Fox News and CNN, without noticing that we are rapidly heading in the same direction.”

Elizabeth May (1954) Canadian politician

Source: Losing Confidence - Power, politics, And The Crisis In Canadian Democracy (2009), Chapter 4, Democracy and the Media, p. 123

Thinking

“Democracy is essentially a political system that recognizes the equality of humans before the law.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Address to Constituent Assembly, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/eisenhower_citizenship_quotations.pdf (8 August 1946)
1940s

Law

“Democracy says, ‘Govern yourself, but do so in a manner consistent with the same right of others.’ Democracy does not lay down a template for each person’s life, as do dictatorships.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p. 22

Life , Personality

“Until George W. Bush, no American president -- not even Franklin Roosevelt or Woodrow Wilson -- actually risked his presidency on the premise that Jefferson might be right. But this gambler from Texas has bet his place in history on the proposition, as he stated in a speech in March, that decades of American presidents' excusing and accommodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability in the Middle East inflamed the hatred of the fanatics who piloted the planes into the twin towers on Sept. 11. If democracy plants itself in Iraq and spreads throughout the Middle East, Bush will be remembered as a plain-speaking visionary.”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

"Who Are Americans to Think That Freedom Is Theirs to Spread?", New York Times Magazine, June 26, 2005

History

“The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war.”

Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman

Jasper Ridley, Tito: A Biography (Constable and Company Ltd., 1994), p. 155.
Other

War , People , Dependency

“It is one of the great achievements of our rule in India that, even if they do not entirely carry them out, educated Indians do accept British principles of justice and liberty. We are condemned by Indians not by the measures of Indian ethical conceptions but by our own, which we have taught them to accept. It is precisely this acceptance by politically conscious Indians of the principles of democracy and liberty which puts us in the position of being able to appeal to them to take part with us in the common struggle; but the success of this appeal and India's response does put upon us the obligation of seeing that we, as far as we may, make them sharers in the things for which we and they are fighting.”

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

Letter to the Cabinet (January 1942), quoted in Paul Addison, The Road to 1945 (London: Pimlico, 1994), pp. 202-203
1940s

Education , Justice , Success , Fight

“Democracy cannot wield authority, because it cannot enforce its decisions. A party cannot move against itself, against its members who engage in scandalous malfeasance, who rob and steal, because it is afraid of losing its members. Nor can it move against its adversaries, because in so doing it would risk exposure of its own wrongdoings and shady business.”

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician

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

Business , Decision

“Democracy is a means of achieving a higher level of individual and collective gratification, welfare, peace, stability and prosperity. It is not an end in itself! Practitioners of democracy in the Pacific should therefore be pragmatic in their approach. An idealistic and a purist approach is, I believe, misplaced.”

Kaliopate Tavola (1946) Fijian politician

( Speech http://www.pacificforum.fiji.gov.fj/speeches/02.html delivered to the 33rd Pacific Pacific Islands Forum, 15 August 2002, Nadi, Fiji) - excerpts.

Peace

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”

Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813) Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian

The earliest known attribution of this quote was December 9, 1951, in what appears to be an op-ed piece in The Daily Oklahoman under the byline Elmer T. Peterson, [This is the Hard Core of Freedom, Elmer T. Peterson, Daily Oklahoman, 9 December 1951, 12A]. The quote has not been found in Tytler's work. It has also been attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville.
There are many variants circulating with various permutations of majority, voters, citizens, or public. Ronald Reagan is known to have used this in speeches, as reported in Loren Collins, "The Truth About Tytler http://lorencollins.net/tytler.html":
Other variants:
The American Republic will endure until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
Attributed

“I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy.”

Coretta Scott King (1927–2006) American author, activist, and civil rights leader. Wife of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Chicago Sun Times (1 April 1998)

“America’s strength comes from its multiculturalism, but that’s only true when all its people, all its races and religions, believe in the same values. Liberals fetishize separation, arguing that immigrants don’t need to learn English, don’t need to stop subjugating women with hijabs and arranged marriages, don’t need to become citizens. They encourage otherness rather than integration. They want immigrants to change the country, rather than the other way around. They say Islam is not the enemy — but that’s only true if Islam is a religion and not a political ideology bent on undermining democracy. Brussels is the result of this thinking. It’s what happens when immigrants are allowed to construct their own state within a state, not pushed to become part of a nation.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"Brussels is what happens when liberals don’t push immigrants to integrate" http://nypost.com/2016/03/27/brussels-is-what-happens-when-liberals-dont-push-immigrants-to-integrate/ New York Post (March 27, 2016).
New York Post

Women , Marriage , People , Religion

“The right to change the government by the ballot box and not the barrel of a gun; perhaps the best definition of a democracy.”

Isabel II do Reino Unido (1926–2022) queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and head of the Commonwealth of Nations

During a speech to President Gerald Ford celebrating the 200th anniversary of American independence. http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/Q

Change , Box

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

Fisher Ames (1758–1808) American politician

The Dangers of American Liberty (1805), in [Ames, Fisher, and Seth Ames, Works of Fisher Ames: with a selection from his speeches and correspondence, 1854, Little, Brown, 349, Boston, http://books.google.com/books?id=fjoOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA349&vq=known+propensity]

“But Cuba doesn’t have a dictatorship — it’s a revolutionary democracy.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez during his television/radio show ¡Aló Presidente! on August 21, 2005. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9032793/
2005

“The basic ideals and concepts of rationalist metaphysics were rooted in the concept of the universally human, of mankind, and their formalization implies that they have been severed from their human content. How this dehumanization of thinking affects the very foundations of our civilization can be illustrated by analysis of the principle of the majority, which is inseparable from the principle of democracy. In the eyes of the average man, the principle of the majority is often not only a substitute for but an improvement upon objective reason: since men are after all the best judges of their own interests, the resolutions of a majority, it is thought, are certainly as valuable to a community as the intuitions of a so-called superior reason. … What does it mean to say that “a man knows his own interests best”—how does he gain this knowledge, what evidences that his knowledge is correct? In the proposition, “A man knows [his own interests] best,” there is an implicit reference to an agency that is not totally arbitrary … to some sort of reason underlying not only means but ends as well. If that agency should turn out to be again merely the majority, the whole argument would constitute a tautology. The great philosophical tradition that contributed to the founding of modern democracy was not guilty of this tautology, for it based the principles of government upon … the assumption that the same spiritual substance or moral consciousness is present in each human being. In other words, respect for the majority was based on a conviction that did not itself depend on the resolutions of the majority.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), pp. 26-27.

Men , Communication , Knowledge , Thinking

“Everyone knows that the Chinese regime is coming to an end. I just say to the people in China who are guilty of crimes of genocide, such as harvesting organs from Falun Gong prisoners—we know your names. We know what you're doing… and you will be punished. This is the world of 2006 and beyond. It is a world of human rights and democracy, and a world in which the CCP has no place.”

Edward McMillan-Scott (1949) British politician

The Epoch Times, Nov 11, 2006 http://www.theepochtimes.com/news/6-11-11/48037.html

People , World

“In an age of democracy and of peaceful or warlike communion among all parts of humanity, philosophy, like poetry and politics, must be prophetic. The content of its prophecy is a vision of how it is that we may respond, right now and with the instruments at hand, to the experience of being lost in a void that is made up of time, into the beginning and end of which we cannot see, and that is indifferent to our concerns. It is a prophecy of the path of our unchaining and of our ascent in a world of time, in which we remain always bound to death and forever denied insight into the ultimate nature of reality…. No philosopher or philosophical tradition in the last two centuries has had a monopoly on this prophecy. It is everywhere.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger book The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound

Source: The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound (2007), p. 27

Death , Age , World , Peace

“We are nations forged from many traditions and faiths, proving year after year that diversity is our strength. From vastly different origins and experiences, we have come to the same conclusions: that freedom and democracy are the strongest bases for both peace and prosperity, and that they are universal aspirations, constrained neither by culture nor levels of economic development.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

New York September 7, 2000 Asia Society Annual Dinner
Quotes from ataljee.org

Peace , Faith , Freedom , Universe

“What hope there is derives from Freud’s assumption that human nature is not so much a hierarchy of high-low, and good-bad, as his predecessors believed, but rather a jostling democracy of contending predispositions, deposited in every nature in roughly equal intensities. … Psychoanalysis is full of such mad logic; it is convincing only if the student of his own life accepts Freud’s egalitarian revision of the traditional idea of a hierarchical human nature.”

Philip Rieff (1922–2006) American sociologist

The Triumph of the Therapeutic (1966)

Life , Hope , Idea , Nature

“We have declared a bitter war against the principle of democracy and all those who seek to enact it.”

Abu Musab Zarqawi (1966–2006) Jordanian jihadist

A week before Iraq's parliamentary election https://www.irishtimes.com/news/abu-musab-al-zarqawi-in-quotes-1.786124 The Irish Times (23rd January 2005)

War

“I have firmly believed since Desert Shield that it is necessary for the strength of our democracy that the military and the press corps maintain a strong, mutually-respectful and enabling relationship. This continues to be problematic for our country, especially during times of war.”

Ricardo Sanchez (1953) United States Army Lieutenant General

Reporters and editors luncheon address (2007)

War , Strong , Time , Country

“Now, surely, when we want to educate ourselves for the purpose of citizenship…If you can clear the mind of cant and detect the fallacy, whatever guise it may be wearing, I think you have made a long step forward in the education that every citizen in a democracy that may hope to endure must have. I think that we all of us realise to-day that no civilised community is bound necessarily and by an inscrutable fate to progress, and there are such things in civilisation as checks, that there is such a thing as retrogression, and that the mere existence of a civilised community is no guarantee either for its continuance or for its progress— in other words, that unless we are the faithful guardians of such civilisation as we have already attained to, we run the risk of seeing the whole of the progress that has been made with such infinite labour up to our own time gradually slipping back and back and back.”

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

Speech at the Philip Scott College (27 September 1923), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 150-151.
1923

Fate , Education , Faith , Hope

“Just because a state is not liberal, it can still be a democracy. And in fact we also had to and did state that societies that are built on the state organisation principle of liberal democracy will probably be incapable of maintaining their global competitiveness in the upcoming decades and will instead probably be scaled down unless they are capable of changing themselves significantly.”

Viktor Orbán (1963) Hungarian politician, chairman of Fidesz

Tusnádfürdő speech http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyos-summer-free-university-and-student-camp, 26 July 2014

Change

“To its neocon architects, Iraq was always about empire, hegemony, Pax Americana, global democracy – about getting hold of America’s power to make the Middle East safe for Sharon and themselves glorious and famous.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

"Have the Neocons Destroyed the Presidency?" http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-have-the-neocons-destroyed-the-presidency-577 (February 16, 2004), Patrick J. Buchanan
2000s

“For the government of the temporary magistrates of a democracy, or even the laws themselves may be as tyrannical as the maxims of the most despotic monarchy, and the administration of the government may be as destructive of private happiness. The only consolation that a democracy suggests in those circumstances is, that every member of the state has a chance of arriving at a share in the chief magistracy, and consequently of playing the tyrant in his turn; and as there is no government in the world so perfectly democratical, as that every member of the state, without exception, has a right of being admitted into the administration, great numbers will be in the same condition as if they had lived under the most absolute monarchy; and this is, in fact, almost universally the case with the poor, in all governments.”

Joseph Priestley book Essay on the First Principles of Government

Section III, "Of Civil Liberty"
Essay on the First Principles of Government, 2nd Edition (1771)

World , Law , Universe , Chance

“Israel, since its inception, has relied on external support, particularly from the Western world, for justification of its policies in Gaza and the West Bank. These relationships are contingent on many things, including values the West claims to hold dear like freedom, democracy, civil rights and equality. The prospect of a negotiated agreement based on two-states has allowed Israel to stave off the confrontation between the myth of these values and the reality on the ground. But as the notion of a two-state agreement fades firmly into history, the apartheid reality becomes impossible to ignore, and further episodes where Israel will confront masses of mobilized Palestinians demanding their rights will continue to highlight this contradiction.”

Yousef Munayyer American writer

In Gaza, Israel Aims To Massacre Hope (2018)

World , History , Support , Reality

“The craze for power among elected representatives is the deathtrap of democracy. Once they get in to the positions of power, they become gluttons, like the hungry at the dining table.”

D. V. Gundappa (1887–1975) Indian writer

In page=20
D.V. Gundappa,Sahitya Akademi

“…foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. That has been the tradition since the days of Truman and Vandenberg all the way until recent times.”

Zbigniew Brzeziński (1928–2017) Polish-American political scientist

Address to the New American Strategies Conference, (October 28, 2003).

Way , Time

“If India's government is to be an institution integrated with her people's lives, if it is to be a true democracy and not a superimposed western institution staged in Indian dress, religion must have an important and recognized place in it with impartiality and reverence for all the creeds and denominations prevailing in India.”

C. Rajagopalachari (1878–1972) Political leader

Rajagopalachari (1959); Quoted in [Reddy, Deepa S., Religious Identity and Political Destiny: Hindutva in the Culture of Ethnicism, http://books.google.com/books?id=Sn7akxOaISkC&pg=PA170, 2006, Rowman Altamira, 978-0-7591-0686-4, 170–]

People , Religion

“Revolutions generally reflect the irresistible impulse for necessary changes which have been held back by official policies or retarded by social apathy. The institutions and practices of democracy provide ways and means by which such changes could be effected without recourse to violence. But change is anathema to authoritarianism, which will tolerate no deviation from rigid policies. Democracy acknowledges the right to differ as well as the duty to settle differences peacefully. Authoritarian governments see criticism of their actions and doctrines as a challenge to combat. Opposition is equated with 'confrontation', which is interpreted as violent conflict. Regimented minds cannot grasp the concept of confrontation as an open exchange of major differences with a view to settlement through genuine dialogue. The insecurity of power based on coercion translates into a need to crush all dissent. Within the framework of liberal democracy, protest and dissent can exist in healthy counterpart with orthodoxy and conservatism, contained by a general recognition of the need to balance respect for individual rights with respect for law and order.”

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

In Quest of Democracy (1991)

Law , Way , Change

“Since the advent of civilization, the outgrowth of property has been so immense, its forms so diversified, its uses so expanding and its management so intelligent in the interests of its owners, that it has become, on the part of the people, an unmanageable power. The human mind stands bewildered in the presence of its own creation. The time will come, nevertheless, when human intelligence will rise to the mastery over property, and define the relations of the state to the property it protects, as well as the obligations and the limits of the rights of its owners. The interests of society are paramount to individual interests, and the two must be brought into just and harmonious relations. A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progress is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilization began is but a fragment of the past duration of man’s existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim; because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes.”

Lewis H. Morgan (1818–1881) United States ethnologist

As quoted in Friedrich Engels's Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/ch09.htm

People , Age , Education , Law

“Half of democracy is about just showing up.”

Ralph Nader (1934) American consumer rights activist and corporate critic

The Good Fight (2004)

“Schumpeter’s work, his dynamic view of the entrepreneur and creative destruction has had a great impact on me. He indeed wrote a book, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, which intended to give a complex analysis of the two systems. But these two books, and a few others (e. g., some of Mises’s and Hayek’s works) are rather exceptional. A typical American textbook on economic systems is not written with the same ambition about capitalism with which I wrote about socialism. It doesn’t give you a general model of capitalism, including the characterization of the political, ideological, and social spheres.”

János Kornai (1928) Hungarian economist

János Kornai, in "An Interview with János Kornai : Interviewed by Olivier Blanchard", Macroeconomic Dynamics, 1999

Books

“Democracy as a system of government may indeed be unprecedented in Afghanistan, but democracy as a way of life, a set of principles and values, is deeply embedded in our society.”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

Speech at the India Today Conclave http://www.afghanembassyjp.org/en/news/?an=1092 (February 25, 2005)
2005

Life , Way

“When I visited Costa Rica earlier this year, I saw how a country can develop successfully without an army, to become a stable democracy committed to peace and the protection of the natural environment. This confirmed my belief that my vision of Tibet in the future is a realistic plan, not merely a dream.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

Nobel lecture (1989)

Peace , Dreams , Nature , Future

“Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant.”

Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism

“What is liberal education,” pp. 4-5
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
Context: It was once said that democracy is the regime that stands or falls by virtue: a democracy is a regime in which all or most adults are men of virtue, and since virtue seems to require wisdom, a regime in which all or most adults are virtuous and wise, or the society in which all or most adults have developed their reason to a high degree, or the rational society. Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy. … There exists a whole science—the science which I among thousands of others profess to teach, political science—which so to speak has no other theme than the contrast between the original conception of democracy, or what one may call the ideal of democracy, and democracy as it is. … Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant.

Education