Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

Trusting each other is the beginning of a certain secular faith, a faith that allows us to live in families and communities and nations. Democracy, above all other forms of government, requires this faith.

Trump wants to be an autocrat, he does want to be a Vladimir Putin-style ruler. His chief strategic advisor, Steve Bannon, is a follower of Alexander Dugin. Dugin believes liberal democracy should be destroyed and it should be destroyed from the right, and an alliance of autocracy should form between the United States, Europe and Russia, in order to confront Islam.

Trump was so different - in a bad way - that I thought the best thing I could do was to resist him. And that's because he was attacking the institutions of our democracy, from the First Amendment and the free press to the judiciary. He was stifling internal dissent, and then he was making false and misleading statements routinely. And to me, that's what takes us down the road to authoritarianism and that's why I decided to start resisting him.

Trump himself stands to benefit dramatically from the tax cuts. One of the things they're cutting is the alternative minimum tax. Last time we have tax returns for him was in 2005, where he paid about $31 million because of the alternative minimum tax. He won't have to pay that, if this tax bill goes through. So, not only is he reordering our constitutional democracy, he is personally enriching himself - which is not new, because, of course, he's done it ever since he swore an oath to become president of the United States.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigorously, more vigorously, and more severely, than by one.

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.

Ukraine is a vital link for Europe: our energy transportation networks; our location between the European Union and Eurasia. We're the melting pot of Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. The democracy we founded with the Orange Revolution has to be an example for other post-Soviet states.

Ultimately, I believe - because energy is so central to our lives - that a common global project to rewire the world with clean energy could be the first step on a path to global peace and global democracy - even in today's deeply troubled world.

Ultimately, we didn't go to Germany to create a democracy. We went to overthrow Adolf Hitler. But once a democracy was there, Germany was a much bigger supporter of and help to our national interests, both economic and security than had ever been before.

Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.

Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don't attack each other.

Under a socialist system every nation will be the supreme arbiter of its own destinies, national and international; will be forced into no alliance against its will, but will have its independence guaranteed and its freedom respected by the enlightened self-interest of the socialist democracy of the world.

Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.

Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

Under theocracies and other authoritarian regimes, the rulers are the moral authorities. Under genuine democracy some basic values are entrenched in the legal system, which is expected to be under democratic vigilance, and others are left to the person or the group, which ideally debate moral problems in a rational, free and cooperative manner.

Unlike national markets, which tend to be supported by domestic regulatory and political institutions, global markets are only 'weakly embedded'. There is no global lender of last resort, no global safety net, and of course, no global democracy. In other words, global markets suffer from weak governance, and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy.

Until democracy in effective enthusiastic action fills the vacuum created by the power of modern inventions, we may expect the fascists to increase in power after the war both in the United States and in the world.

Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated.

Vaclav Havel was the most amazing man in terms of being the combination of somebody with massive moral authority, great courage for having espoused the concepts of democracy, freedom throughout a very difficult communist period, a very modest man, and somebody with a fabulous sense of humor and the idea of being able to see the absurd in situations.

Violence, with its ever-present economy of uncertainty, fear, and terror, is no longer merely a side effect of police brutality, war, or criminal behavior. It has become fundamental to neoliberalism as a particularly savage facet of capitalism. And in doing so it has turned out to be central to legitimating those social relations in which the political and pedagogical are redefined in order to undercut possibilities for authentic democracy.

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to take place under conditions of guerrilla war.

Violence is hidden within democratic structures because they are not radically democratic - Western democracy is merely a domestic convenience of consumerism.

Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns.

Vladimir Putin is doubtlessly trying to drive a wedge into the Western alliance. When it comes to the Russian minorities in the Baltics, Putin will surely know that his chances there are slim to none. They are quite comfortable in those countries. But at the moment, there are at least three EU member-states where it is questionable whether they still belong among Western democracies: Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.

Voting is the most precious right of every citizen, and we have a moral obligation to ensure the integrity of our voting process.

Voter suppression laws, overzealous filibuster use, you name it - the Republicans use every tactic they can to stop our democracy from actually selecting the person with the most support.

We all have a responsibility, and as Rabbi Heschel, one of my prophets, has put it: "Those who condone, or are silent, in the face of injustice, are more guilty than the perpetrators." And so, to the degree we pretend to be a democracy, we have a corresponding duty to be activist enough to prevent our human rights form being infringed upon.

We all have a large stake in preserving our democracy, but I maintain that those without power in our society, the black, the brown, the poor of all colors, have the largest stake not because we have the most to lose, but because we have worked the hardest, and given the most, for what we have achieved.

We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.

We all have more at stake in the rules of the game than we do in the outcomes of the game. When that changes, that's when you begin to lose democracy.

We are here to advance the cause of women and to advance the cause of democracy and to make it absolutely clear that the two are inseparable.

We all need to provide the checks and balances for democracy.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

We are a democracy, and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on.There isnot a crime, there isnot a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which does not live by secrecy.Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.

We are a representative democracy. But how did we get there? We got there through direct action. And that's enshrined in our Constitution and in our values.

We are living through an epochal shift. If we aren't careful, the elementary foundations of our pluralistic democracy will be threatened.

We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.

We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened.

We are patriots in my family, we are believers in America, we're believers in democracy.

We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.

We are in this business, whether it be intelligence or the government, to protect freedom, democracy and liberty, not to violate that.

We are not going to be able to rebuild Afghanistan into a Jeffersonian democracy.

We are one people despite the ostensible rifts, cracks, and differences between the American and Soviet democracies. We are one people and it is not in our interests that the West should liberate the East, for in doing this and in liberating the enslaved nations, the West would inevitably deprive Jewry of the Eastern half of its world power.

We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.

We are seeing a working-class, a middle class, which over the last three decades has seen their wages and income stagnate, while the very rich have seen their tax burden lighten in ways not seen in three or four decades. It's a face of a country that we need to look at and understand that inequality is perhaps the greatest threat to our economic recovery and democracy, and in that context we must take action.

We are sitting on a cornucopia of knowing that we had no way to access as a democracy. We couldn't get the democratization of the human capacity before our time.