Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

We say in a democracy that good ideas will drive out bad ones, so if the good ones aren't there, we're left with the bad ones

We say that if America has entered the war to make the world safe for democracy, she must first make democracy safe in America.

We see threats to liberal democracy coming from lots of directions. We have to create something new, a common response, because in so many places - the UK, France, Germany - ultranationalists and the far left threaten the free market and liberal democracy.

We should be supportive of the president and supportive of rights of all in a pluralistic democracy that we're called to love. And we live our faith; we don't legislate our faith.

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.

We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force.

[We should beware] that our democracy stays healthy. And making sure that we maintain that sense of solidarity.

We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic.

We Social-Democrats always stand for democracy, not "in the name of capitalism," but in the name of clearing the path for our movement, which clearing is impossible without the development of capitalism.

Western-style multi-party democracy is possible but not suitable for Africa.

We still have a lot of work to do to protect our own democracy.

We talk about democracy as if it's a safeguard for individual rights... Instead, it's become our way of intruding on rights, allegedly in the name of that most collectivist of concepts: The Common Good.

We understand that a thriving democracy would not be achieved if the people were still uneducated, and that, to educate them, the country has to pay a very high price.

We urge all democratic nations and the United Nations to answer the Iraqi Governing Council's call for support for the people of Iraq in making the transition to democracy.

We've been fighting from the beginning for organic architecture. That is, architecture where the whole is to the part as the part is to the whole, and where the nature of materials, the nature of the purpose, the nature of the entire performance becomes a necessity-architecture of democracy.

We've got to understand that the whole nature of the way American democracy guards its freedom has been changed

We've got to rescue our democracy by using it.

We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

We want the full works of citizenship with no reservations. We will accept nothing less . . . This condition of freedom, equality, and democracy is not the gift of gods. It is the task of men, yes, men, brave men, honest men, determined men.

We've seen a lot of dirty politics in Ireland. We know from the French, their wonderfully neurotic presidents, that our hands are sort of tied. The Italians - I don't know where it stops. No nation can claim "We are an uncorrupt nation, therefore we will tell you what the morals of democracy are." Because it's going on everywhere.

We want capitalism and market forces to be the slave of democracy rather than the opposite.

We want to lead by our values and out interests in ways that, regardless of the trajectory over the next decade, people will know the United States was on the side of democracy, on the side of the rule of law.

We were on the way to democracy. We didn't say that we are fully democratic, we were on the way, we were moving forward. Slowly or fast, that's subjective, cannot be objective, that's always subjective. But we're moving forward in that regard.

We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy, and freedom.

We will not let terrorists change our way of life; we will not live in fear; and we will not undermine the civil liberties that characterize our Democracy.

We will shortly become like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, or Sweden - a socialist democracy in which the government dominates the economy, determines private-sector priorities and offers a vastly expanded range of services to many more people at much higher taxes.

We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.

What a liberal really wants is to bring about change that will not in any way endanger his position.

What are the maxims of Democracy? A strict observance of justice and public faith, and a steady adherence to virtue.

What are we afraid of? We're afraid of the truth. We're pretending that we live in a democracy, and we're pretending we're free. The insanity is that we live inside of the false stories that we tell each other.

What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.

What Democratic congressmen do to their women staffers, Republican congressmen do to the country.

What does democracy come down to? The persuasive power of slogans invented by wily self-seeking politicians.

Whatever field of human activity one may take, only those trends that are in harmony with the needs of society show rapid progress.

Whatever politicians, activists and manipulators propose, it is the phlegmatic, indifferent, ingrained electorate which disposes.

What good is having the right to sit at a lunch counter if you can't afford to buy a hamburger?

What good shall I do this day?

What I'd do is not have USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy working with U.S. taxpayers' money to knock off an elected government in Ukraine, which is what they did. I wouldn't try to force the people of Ukraine into a deal with NATO against their interest or into a deal with the European Union, which is against their economic interest.

What good is democracy if you can't get what you want?

What happened to the Soviet Union happened mainly for domestic reasons. It was a failure of the model based on a command economy and dictatorship. The rejection of freedom and democracy, the decisionmaking monopoly of one party, and the monopoly of one ideology all had a chilling effect on the country. That model turned out to be incapable of making structural changes. It did not open up ways for initiative and was overly centralized.

What is a political party but a conspiracy?

What is the elephant in all our rooms? It is the global triumph of capitalism. Democracy is fiercely disputed. Freedom is under threat even in old-established democracies such as Britain. Western supremacy is on the skids. But everyone does capitalism. Americans and Europeans do it. Indians do it. Russian oligarchs and Saudi princes do it. Even Chinese communists do it... Karl Marx would be turning in his grave. Or perhaps not, since some of his writings eerily foreshadowed our era of globalised capitalism. His prescription failed but his description was prescient.

What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.

What kind of economy grows for decades on end but doesn't allow most of the population to share in the gains from that growth?

What I've said is we're going to encourage democracy in Pakistan, expand our nonmilitary aid to Pakistan so that they have more of a stake in working with us, but insisting that they go after these militants.

What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy.

What should be targeted is a concept of organic, and not just mechanic, democracy that preserves the rule of law, separation of powers, and that is participatory and pluralistic.

What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.

What nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.

What's happened recently in Pakistan, India and Kuwait only goes to show that it's futile to imitate Western democracy. They've ended up exactly where they started.