Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

People despise the lust for power that originates from a craving for homage and for the attributes of power.

People who thought that she was busy going around trying to stir up difficulty where there was none or less than she imagined, were quite critical of her. She was, we must never forget, a public figure. And in democracies, public figures tend to attract criticism as well as praise. The most dangerous thing would be if anybody were regarded as above criticism. And Eleanor Roosevelt is, in recent years, getting there.

People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.

People start to talk about post-racist, post-feminist. What does that mean? We're clearly not post either. Would you say post-democracy? Clearly we haven't reached true democracy yet.

People who live under fascism are not only miserable but they're full of shame. You just don't go in and inject democracy into them. They're half crazy with their own.

Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies.

Perhaps it's time to start examining countries that have made democracy work while still having some kind of the same relationship in covenant with their population. Perhaps we need to look at the Scandinavian countries, or Canada, or something else, but whatever we have now, I think we just have to acknowledge, ain't workin.

Performance of one's duties should be independent of public opinion.

Political disagreements have the colour and fragrance that normally is seen and felt in a political bouquet, while remaining united on one issue that democracy is the future of Pakistan.

Poetry is the ultimate democracy.

politicians ... turn patriotism into shopkeeping and their own interest - men who care far more for who governs us than for how we are governed.. And what will be the end of such ways? I will tell you. We shall have a Democracy that will be the reign of those who know the least and talk the loudest.

Politicians don't want democracy here in America, why would they want it in the Middle East?

Politicians, no matter who they are, shouldn't be able to manipulate the public on a single issue and then call an election at the height of support - that's a little bit of a manipulation of democracy.

Politics is democracy's way of handling public business. We won't get the type of country in the kind of world we want unless people take part in the public's business.

Politicians that proclaim big words without meaning rule in democracy. At best they allow themselves to discover that it's better to be rich and healthy than sick and poor and that it is necessary to care for 'good of Poland" - clap clap, hurricane of clapping.

Politics /n/: from 'poly ticks', short for 'many small bloodsucking insects'.

Politics matters. Ideas matter. Democracy matters, because all of us need to be able to make a difference.

Polls are the corporate media's standardized tests to determine how well we have learned what it has taught us.

Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes.

Politics is the most concentrated expression of economics.

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

Popular congresses are the only means to achieve popular democracy. Any system of government other than popular congresses is undemocratic.

President Obama is currently on a week-long trip to Africa, where he will promote freedom, democracy, and economic opportunity. I guess he figured it hasn't worked here - so try it somewhere else.

Popularity and democracy aren't a judge, they're just stats.

Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery.

Primarily, Warsaw and Brussels share the central basic values of the EU: human dignity, democracy, and the religious freedom of every single human being. We believe in these values.

Politics needs a flexible mind, for it has no immutable or eternal rules. In politics immutable or eternal rules lead to inevitable and swift defeat.

Prosperity can't be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations. Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain, too.

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. It is a corrective to the sluggishness of "the proper channels," a way of breaking through passages blocked by tradition and prejudice. It is disruptive and troublesome, but it is a necessary disruption, a healthy troublesome.

Protection of private property is a fundamental right protected in a strong democracy.

[Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.

Putting it as strongly as I can, the failure to give free airtime for our political campaigns endangers our democracy.

Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.

Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy.

Reality has changed, and we changed with it. However, I never changed sides. I have always been on the side of justice, democracy and social equality.

Recent action in Syria and Palestine also tell us that the awakening voices of democracy in those regions are occurring, and that those in that region are able to pursue it without being stifled by terrorists that are despotic.

Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy.

Recreation is not a secondary concern for a democracy. It is a primary concern, for the kind of recreation a people make for themselves determines the kind of people they become and the kind of society they build.

Referendums are a democratic instrument, but so are decisions reached in a parliamentary democracy. I advise extreme caution when it comes to referendums. In Germany too.

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

Public control of the political process requires public financing. The restoration of our American Democracy depends upon public financing.

Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

Remember, the Islamist view of democracy is: one man, one vote, one election, and that's it.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Republicans are pushing legislation forward that will improve the effectiveness of and bring more accountability to U.S. foreign assistance around the world and bring democracy even further into the light.

Representative democracy frequently manifests a disconnect between parliamentarians and the people, so that parliamentarians have agendas that do not correspond with the wishes of the electorate. This has led in many countries to apathy, cynicism and large-scale absenteeism in elections. What is needed is not only parliaments, but parliamentarians who genuinely represent the wishes of the electorate.

Relative to the world's other advance democracies, Americans get off easy on tax day. Of the 35 richest countries, the U.S. ranks 32nd in total tax burden.