Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

My start in politics was watching my parents go to the polls on election day. It reminded me that being an active, engaged citizen and voter is critical to the success of our democracy.

Nationalisation...does not in itself engender greater equality, more jobs in the regions, higher investment or industrial democracy. The public knows this perfectly well, and so do the workers who have suffered from pit closures, steel redundancies and the run-down of the railways. It is idiotic to try to bamboozle them.

Naturally I never had the intention to offend or alienate Slavs. ... What makes me different from the 'nazis' are basically three things; unlike them I am not socialistic (not even on a national level), I am not materialistic and I believe in (the ancient Scandinavian!) democracy.

Nations are like people. Once you understand the interactions between nations, it's easy to understand why things are done, in terms of foreign policy, in a certain way. But nations are not like people in the sense that we are cumulatively represented by others - and their interpretations of what our interests are may not be the same as what they really are. And that's what's dangerous, even in a democracy.

NATO is based on shared values. Democracy, individual civil liberties and the rule of law. In public and also in meetings with the allies, I have repeatedly pointed out how crucial these common values are. They are the basis for our unity, and unity is the most important basis for our strength.

NDA not only stands for National Democratic Alliance but is also the National Development Alliance.

Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence.

Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Network technology has irrevocably changed campaigning and elections. It has the potential to transform governance and the workings of our democracy for the better.

Neutral men are the devil's allies.

New possibilities for a more active democracy are beginning to emerge in the information age. Effective citizen action is possible if citizens develop the abilities to gain access to information of all kinds and the skills to put such information to effective use.

No America without democracy, no democracy without politics no politics without parties, no parties without compromise and moderation.

Nobody said democracies supposed to be easy. It's hard. And in a big country like America, it probably should be hard.

Nobody should be allowed to tinker with democracy. We will not discontinue the good works of the past government.

[N]o democracy with a free press has ever experienced a major famine.

No compromise is possible and the victory of the democracies can only be complete with the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan.

No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.

No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.

No government by experts in which the masses do not have the chance to inform the experts as to their needs can be anything but an oligarchy managed in the interest of the few. And the enlightenment must proceed in ways which force the administrative specialists to take account of the needs. The world has suffered more from leaders and authorities than from the masses. The essential need ... is the improvement of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion. That is the problem of the public.

No less characteristic in a democracy is social justice. This demands a solution to the frightening indexes of infant mortality, of malnutrition, lack of education illiteracy, wages not sufficient to sustain life

No one can learn tolerance in a climate of irresponsibility, which does not produce democracy. The act of tolerating requires a climate in which limits may be established, in which there are principles to be respected. That is why tolerance is not coexistence with the intolerable. Under an authoritarian regime, in which authority is abused, or a permissive one, in which freedom is not limited, one can hardly learn tolerance. Tolerance requires respect, discipline, and ethics.

Nonetheless, we continue to be obsessed with finding or inventing a European nation which, as in the nation state, guarantees homogeneity and thus an appropriate form of democracy and centralized government.

No matter what happens, nothing can prevent the historical process by which society demands freedom and democracy.

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.

No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.

No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts off from its youth severs its lifeline.

No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy.

[N]o one's ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It's just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.

No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise.

No politician can praise unemployment or inflation, and there is no way of combining high employment with stable prices that does not involve some control of income and prices. Otherwise the struggle for more consumption and more income to sustain it-a struggle that modern corporations, modern unions and modern democracy all facilitate and encourage-will drive up prices. Only heavy unemployment will then temper this upward thrust. Not many wish to confront the truth that the modern economy gives a choice only between inflation, unemployment, or controls.

No perfect democracy is possible without perfect nonviolence at the back of it.

No real journalist makes $5 million a year... Those in power fear and dislike real journalists.

Nothing so diminishes democracy as secrecy.

No tempest or conflagration, however great, is harder to quell than mob carried away by the novelty of power.

Nothing to impede progress. If you want to see the fate of democracies, look out the windows.

Not less, but more democracy - that is the demand, that is the great goal that we have to prescribe for ourselves, and especially for our youth.

Notice, by extension, that in a democracy those committed to non-procreation could never, in the long run, prevail politically against those committed to procreation.

Now the question is, now that we are there, what should we do in the best interest of the U.S., not only from a standpoint of the necessity of some stable democracy in the Middle East.

Now as through this world I ramble, I see lots of funny men, Some rob you with a six gun, And some with a fountain pen.

Now that our media companies and it appears are policies are traded for cash, what is there to check the continuing consolidation of power and diminishing of democracy?

Nuclear weapons are inherently threatening to all of civilization. If that had been a nuclear weapon at the World Trade Center, even the most primitive kind of the Hiroshima, Nagasaki, you wouldn't have a Manhattan. There wouldn't be a democracy of any kind in America.

Obama's rhetorical overtures to democracy, it turned out, were just a decoy to conceal his unwavering determination to govern from the far left.

Obamacare is a crime against democracy.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

Obamacare is a crime against democracy because a material part of that bill was not disclosed to the Senate nor to the House of Representatives. The funding was hidden in the bill. That was fraud and I can't vote for any budget that fails to bring back that money from Obamacare.

Of governments there are said to be only two forms - democracy and oligarchy. For aristocracy is considered to be a kind of oligarchy, as being the rule of a few, and the so-called constitutional government to be really a democracy.

Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.

Of course I wrote most of the Constitution myself. I remember hesitating for a long time over the US presidential system. But it wouldn't have done - we were too trained in English democracy to sit down under a dictatorship which is what the American system really is.

Of course democracy is good, but it is a process, not a prescription.

Offering democracy to an Arab is like bringing a horse to a steakhouse.