Source: 2000s, The Idea of Justice, 2009, p. xiii
“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.”
Written speech fragment presented by to the Chicago Veterans Druggist's Association in 1906 by Judge James B. Bradwell, who claimed to have received it from Mary Todd Lincoln. Collected Works, 2:532 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;view=text;idno=lincoln2;rgn=div1;node=lincoln2%3A547
Posthumous attributions
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Do you have more details about the quote "As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this,…" by Abraham Lincoln?
Abraham Lincoln 618
16th President of the United States 1809–1865Related quotes
“Democracy allows people to have different views, and democracy”
Aung San Suu Kyi
(1945) State Counsellor of Myanmar and Leader of the National League for Democracy
Remarks by President Obama and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma in Joint Press Conference at Aung San Suu Kyi Residence in Rangoon, Burma on November 14, 2014 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/14/remarks-president-obama-and-daw-aung-san-suu-kyi-burma-joint-press-confe
Context: Democracy allows people to have different views, and democracy makes it also -- makes us also responsible for negotiating an answer for those views. [... ] So we would like to -- it’s not just a matter of debating the case in parliament and winning Brownie points or Boy Scout points, or whatever they’re called. But it’s just a case of standing up for what we think our country needs. And we would like to talk to those who disagree with us. That, again, is what democracy is about. You talk to those who disagree with you; you don’t beat them down. You exchange views. And you come to a compromise, a settlement that would be best for the country. I’ve always said that dialogues and debates are not aimed at achieving victory for one particular party or the other, but victory for our people as a whole. [... ] We want to build up a strong foundation for national reconciliation, which means reconciliation not just between the different ethnic groups and between different religious groups, but between different ideas -- for example, between the idea of military supremacy and the idea of civilian authority over the military, which is the foundation of democracy.
Barack Obama
(1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2017, Farewell Address (January 2017)
Ronald Reagan
(1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)
Remarks at Human Rights Day event http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1986/121086a.htm (10 December 1986)
1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989)
George Soros
(1930) Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist
BuzzFlash interview (2004)
Speech, "The War and the Future" (1940); published in Order of the Day (1942)
Context: It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
Ruhollah Khomeini
(1902–1989) Religious leader, politician
Imam's Sahife, vol. 5, p. 468. (15 January 1979)
Foreign policy
Zhuangzi
(-369–-286 BC) classic Chinese philosopher
"Discussion on Making All Things Equal"; Variant: If right were really right, it would be so different from not-right that there would be no room for argument. If so were really so, then it would be so different from not-so that there would be no room for argument.
Source: How Propaganda Works (2015), p. 11