Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

Barack Obama's devastating. His policies and his presidency are devastating. But I have this confidence that he's not gonna succeed in total transforming this country into a Western European socialist democracy where the vast majority of the population just lays down and accepts it.

Basically, we are witnessing the twilight of democracy.

Because of our Congressional committee system, our government is closer to a gerontocracy than a democracy.

Because they don't teach the truth about the world, schools have to rely on beating students over the head with propaganda about democracy. If schools were, in reality, democratic, there would be no need to bombard students with platitudes about democracy. They would simply act and behave democratically, and we know this does not happen. The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is.

Being adequately informed is a democratic duty, just as the vote is a democratic right. A misinformed electorate, voting without knowledge, is not a true democracy.

Being 'at the mercy of legislative majorities' is merely another way of describing the basic American plan: representative democracy.

Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual.

Better use has been made of association and this powerful instrument of action has been applied for more varied aims in America than anywhere else in the world.

Big business is not dangerous because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy.

Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent social classes, a basic uniformity of interest throughout.

Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

Both love and democracy depend on voice -- having a voice and also the resonance that makes it possible to speak and be heard.

Bourgeois democracy is democracy of pompous phrases, solemn words, exuberant promises and the high-sounding slogans of freedom and equality. But, in fact, it screens the non-freedom and inferiority of women, the non-freedom and inferiority of the toilers and exploited.

Bring it on. Dissent is central to any democracy.

Bosses are no more inevitable in state and local governments than dictators are in national governments. They will arise and prosper, nevertheless, if true believers of democracy - citizens devoted to the democratic ideals - do not constantly oppose them.

Brains are like representative democracies. They are built of multiple, overlapping experts who weigh in and compete over different choices.

British chancellor is telling the rest of Europe it must abandon democracy. It's appalling.

Britain and the United States have an enduring and special relationship based on the values of freedom, democracy and enterprise.

But a wild democracy . . . too often disdains the essential principles of justice.

Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

Burma is not yet a full-fledged democracy. We have started working on the road to full democracy. We have a lot of things to do in order to build a democratic structure and to be become a full-fledged democracy.

But Cuba doesn't have a dictatorship - it's a revolutionary democracy.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the course of development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to Communism.

But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

But how can you speed up the transformation of society in a country as large as Russia? Those sounding the moral outcry are the ones who are trying to dictate their standards from the outside. Of course, that isn't the right way to go either. One cannot impose democracy from the other side of national borders, which is something we ourselves experienced during the communist era. The West's policies toward Eastern Europe, the Helsinki process - none of that really helped us.

But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.

But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist many other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign governments still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags that time cannot decay, I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

But I think we need to remember that democracy everywhere is by its nature incomplete, a work in progress.

But our energy woes are in many ways the result of classic market failures that can only be addressed through collective action, and government is the vehicle for collective action in a democracy.

But rather than trying to understand and rise above them, as leaders should, the [presedential] campaigns have often simply channeled these negative emotions. This has made the substance and tone of much of the discussion not only unpleasant and uninspiring, but the acrimony and divisiveness are not healthy for our democracy.

But the moment the politicians start saying they are in denial of what the scientists are telling them, of what the consensus of scientific experiments demonstrates, that is the beginning of the end of an informed democracy.

By giving the government unlimited powers, the most arbitrary rule can be made legal; and in this way a democracy may set up the most complete despotism imaginable.

But the Western countries that link their partnership with the poorest countries with respect for democracy also have to consider that they have obligations towards these countries.

But we have a war of ideals and ideas, and that is to sell democracy.

By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature.

But there is nothing idealized or romantic about the difference between a society whose arrangements roughly serve all its citizens (something otherwise known as social justice) and one whose institutions have been converted into a stupendous fraud. That can be the difference between democracy and plutocracy.

Calm and order can be just as dangerous to democracy as uneasiness and disorder.

Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.

Canada does not just 'go along' in order to 'get along.' We will 'go along,' only if we 'go' in a direction that advances Canada’s values: freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy has no place.

Can it be believed that the democracy, which has overthrown the feudal system and vanquished kings, will retreat before tradesmen and capitalists?

Capitalism and democracy are the opposite of each other. Capitalism is a system that guarantees that a few are going to do very well, and everybody else is going to serve the few. Democracy means everybody has a seat at the table. Everybody.

Capitalism has defeated communism. It is now well on its way to defeating democracy.

Capitalism is against the things that we say we believe in - democracy, freedom of choice, fairness. It's not about any of those things now. It's about protecting the wealthy and legalizing greed.

Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.

Characteristically, however, the overthrow of the dictator simply means that there will be another dictator. ... the policies they follow will probably not be radically different. If we look around the world, we quickly realize that these policies will not be radically different from those that would be followed by a democracy either.

Celebrity distorts democracy by giving the rich, beautiful, and famous more authority than they deserve.

Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change; in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.