Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

Working together in helping nascent democracies in the task of reconstruction, in the task of development is another area where our two countries [India and the USA] can work together.

Working with children is the easiest part of educating for democracy, because children are still undefeated and have no stake in being prejudiced.

World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!

Yes, there is a crisis of hunger on the planet, but hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.

You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocrisy.

You are never wrong when you have voted because you've acted in accordance with your conscience and your beliefs, and you've exercised your democratic right, which is, you know, perfectly legitimate in our democracies.

You are sitting here defending an assault on American democracy. Somebody probably said nice things about anybody at a given point. This is an unprecedented event that was done at the behest of the House Republicans that was leaked to the press by the House Republicans.

You can make peace with an enemy, if the enemy abandons the idea of destroying you. That is the critical test. Democracies fail to understand what I just said.

You cannot bring democracy to a country by attacking it.

You cannot apply your high standards to a country [Egypt] burdened with decades of autocratic rule. Our democracy is still in its infancy.

You cannot have democracy without the institutions. You cannot have a democracy that is built on the moods of self-interested people.

You cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state.

You can't always say what's popular and you ought to go with it. I think that's why the founders were concerned about direct democracy. That's why we have a republic and that's why we have representatives who who are supposed to look at the issues and to look out for the next generation as well.

You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.

You can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations are considered people.

You can’t have meaningful political democracy without functioning economic democracy.

You don't have any vestige of democracy in this country. A report recently came out of Princeton University claiming that, of all the policies that have been made in the last thirty years, 95% of them were in the interest of the rich and had nothing to do with what people wanted - basic services, roads, all of that. They called it an oligarchy.

You have fewer rights because you are a minority. Absolutely, that’s how democracy works.

You don't help a country by supporting a military regime that denies any sign of democracy, and what defeated Pakistan was its military regime.

You do not keep American democracy in suspense. Because, look, too many people have marched and protested and fought and died for this democracy.

You just wait and see. The lily-livered b*stards in Washington will demobilize. They'll say they've made the world safe for democracy again. The Russians are not such d*mned fools. They'll rebuild; and with modern weapons.

You may hate Hillary Clinton and you may have good reason for hating Hillary Clinton, but Hillary Clinton is one person who even if she's elected will be gone one day and you still have the task of keeping American democracy going.

You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem.

You know, real life doesn't just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it. Democracy, marriage, friendship. You can't just say she's my best friend. That's not a given, it's a process.

You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.

You must remember that democracy is made up not only of the executive, but the legislature and the judiciary.

Your little child is the only true democrat.

You said, 'How is it possible for democracy to work with an illiterate people who are dying of hunger?' But with that people we made a democracy work.

You said, 'Planning is something for communist countries; democracy and planning don't go together!' But, with all the errors we committed, our plans succeeded.

You see in Turkey, they had a remarkable success story in building up a democracy. I was in Istanbul for most of the year 1950. That was the year when the government held free and fair election, was defeated and simply withdrew from power and handed it over to the opposition, without precedent in Middle Eastern history. That was a really remarkable time and it was a fascinating and rewarding experience to be there at that time.

You should support Israel not because it is Jewish but because it is a sane, secular democracy. You want Lebanon to be at peace. You don't care much about Kuwait.

You think history is going to remember the United States as a great democracy? No, they're going to think of us as a nation that became addicted to war. They'll call us warlords.

You start to learn that democracies don't work when it comes to artistic expression. You learn that if you don't handle your business, someone else is going to handle it and be sneaky about it, and put an extra dollar in their pocket. You learn all sorts of things you take to your next relationship. You're constantly learning about what you don't want to do, first and foremost, which leads you to what you do want to do.

According to Oxfam, for example, the fifty largest American companies have, by perfectly legal means, shifted over $1 trillion to offshore tax havens, costing the US government about $111 billion in lost tax revenue.

A call to embrace democracy is the worst insult to a society that is still alien to civilisation. It is like being asked to dance to the tune of mob justice.

About the principle of representation and the concept of a parliament, today we have grown accustomed to associating them exclusively with the system of absolute democracy, based on universal suffrage and the principle of one man, one vote. This basis is absurd and indicates more than anything else the individualism that, combined with the pure criterion of quantity and of number, defines modern democracy. We say individualism in the bad sense, because here we are dealing with the individual as an abstract, atomistic and statistical unity, not as a ‘person’, because the quality of a person — that is, a being that has a specific dignity, a unique quality and differentiated traits—is obviously negated and offended in a system in which one vote is the equal of any other, in which the vote of a great thinker, a prince of the Church, an eminent jurist or sociologist, the commander of an army, and so on has the same weight, measured by counting votes, as the vote of an illiterate butcher’s boy, a halfwit, or the ordinary man in the street who allows himself to be influenced in public meetings, or who votes for whoever pays him. The fact that we can talk about ‘progress’ in reference to a society where we have reached the level of considering all this as normal is one of the many absurdities that, perhaps, in better times will be the cause of amazement or amusement.

Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails (as down South similar kings watched), and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said (and said truly): The rabble cannot manage itself. Well, the rabble could. The rabble would. He would lead the rabble in managing. The thing would be won.

A corrupt government is born not from corrupt politicians, but from corrupt citizens.

Activism begins with you, Democracy begins with you, get out there, get active! Tag, you're it

A corrupt nation is born not from corrupt politicians, but from corrupt citizens.

A democracy is not truly democratic unless it's secular.

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.

A diferença nos tempos de decisão pode ser interpretada como um indicador de maiores escrúpulos por parte dos ingleses. Por outro lado, tal diferença podia ter origem na simples vantagem que um ditador tem (em caso de guerra) sobre um governo democrático. Não será de todo injusto afirmar que Churchill estava consciente desta última situação. Nas memórias que escreveria mais tarde nota-se o quanto sofreu com os debates que se prolongaram ao longo de meses, acabando por demorar precisamente o tempo necessário até todo o empreendimento perder o seu sentido estratégico; tudo por causa de decisões tomadas sem convicção e novamente descartadas, do vai e vem, dos compromissos, da necessidade de argumentar justamente onde ele queria decidir e comandar.

A democracy of mean and ignorant people is just as scary as any other horrible form of government.

A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.

A free world doesn't mean a civilized world, for freedom without responsibility leads to more chaos than lack of freedom does.

After a democratic interlude the "monarchy" returns with a vengeance, returns by the back door, camouflaged, masked and diabolically perverted—a blood-curdling metamorphosis we know only from nightmares or surrealist films. The reassertion of the natural father-urge does not result in the restitution of the paternal kingdom but in the rise of the Terrifying Father, a Krónos devouring his own children, who are paralyzed by his magnetic glare like rabbits facing a boa constrictor.

After all, wasn't the system the problem? No matter who we voted for, the government always seemed to win. What was the point of living out my little fantasy of democratic change and Justice when the real action was being fought out in secrecy, with Anonymous envelopes of cash, encrypted Whispers, secret bunkers, and secret deals?