Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.

A mercantile democracy may govern long and widely; a mercantile aristocracy cannot stand.

America does not hold to the colonial tradition. America came, liberated Afghanistan from the Taliban and al-Qaida, came to an arrangement with Hamid Karzai, wanted to organize elections as soon as possible and then withdraw. The Bush administration thought that once there is a democracy, everything else will fall into place. If today you speak to the architects of the 2001 Afghanistan Conference in Bonn, they will tell you that instead of being fixated on elections, we should have built a State in Afghanistan with an army and a police force first.

America is an empire that does not wish to be one ; we are easily discouraged from doing what must be done to maintain the global order that allows democracy and prosperity to flourish.

America is at war with itself because it's basically declared war not only on any sense of democratic idealism, but it's declared war on all the institutions that make democracy possible. And we see it with the war on public schools. We see it with the war on education. We see it with the war on the healthcare system.

America has never seen itself as a national state like all others, but rather as an experiment in human freedom and democracy.

America in some ways is much more of a democracy then France. It is and it's not.

America is an outlier in the world of democracies when it comes to the structure and conduct of elections.

America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism.

America is perhaps best viewed as an 'authoritarian democracy' within its own territory and as 'a global state' of a new kind when considered internationally.

American democracy is capsizing as a result of the vast increase in the number of government dependents and government employees.

America is the only advanced industrial democracy where people can get sick and languish because they can't afford care. Or where people are blocked in access to the system because they don't have access to insurance, which is only available through certain narrow portals and under certain very restricted conditions. We're the only society that hasn't embraced this idea that no one should go without access to these services, regardless of their financial condition. And no one should be saddled with a lifetime of debt because they have the misfortune of falling ill.

American democracy is in grave danger from the changes in the environment in which ideas either live and spread or wither and die.

American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

American democracy and the Soviet system can exist simultaneously and compete peacefully. But one cannot develop into the other.

American democracy has been hacked.

American democracy is really under attack here [Clinton campaign that was hacked]. And the question is how are we and in particular and how are Democrats going to respond to this. We have to understand this is really, really quite extraordinary. And it would seem to me that the FBI shouldn't be getting rolled by the House Republicans and that's what happened here.

American democracy is the inalienable right to sit on your front porch, in your pyjamas, drinking a can of beer and shouting out 'Where else is this possible?' Which doesn't seem to me to be freedom, really.

America is the one place in the world where I just innately understood [that] South Africa and the United States of America have a very similar history. It's different timelines, but the directions we've taken and the consequences - dealing with the aftermath of what we consider to be democracy, and realizing that freedom is just the beginning of the conversation, that's something I've learned.

American democracy and the Soviet system may peacefully exist side by side and compete with each other. But one cannot evolve into the other.

American democracy is spoiled by people buying everything in sight and then selling and buying everything in sight, including our politicians.

Americans are about to discover that their system is more vulnerable than they thought. There's a lot of complacency in American politics, there's a lot of complacency in advanced democracies generally.

Americans like to humiliate wrongdoers...We like, in short, to punish. It makes us feel good. By every conceivable metric - arrests, prosecutions, duration of sentences, conditions of imprisonment - the United States is by far the most punitive rich democracy.

Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to the test, usually find it to be an 'inconvenience.' We have opted instead for an authoritarian system disguised as a Democracy. We pay through the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around, and then wonder how all those assholes got in there.

America's greatest contribution to the world is its concept of democracy, its concept of freedom, freedom of action, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought.

America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

America's support for human rights and democracy is our noblest export to the world.

America's objective in the Middle East is to create democracy in the same way that my goal on a first date to feed women.

Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of authentic democracy.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Amnesty International continues to report that extra judicial tortures and murders continue. This is not democracy that we are exporting to Mexico, and this is certainly not what the Mexican workers signed up for.

A more important antidote to American democracy is American gerontocracy. The positions of eminence and authority in Congress are allotted in accordance with length of service, regardless of quality.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

Anarcho-syndic alism took for granted that working people ought to control their own work, its conditions, the enterprises in which they work, along with communities, so they should be associated with one another in free associations, and democracy of that kind should be the foundational elements of a more general free society.

Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them.

An attack on public education is an attack on democracy.

A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can't be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.

A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the last extremes of injustice and oppression.

And a democracy can't exist without free speech and the right to assemble. And that's what Americans tend to forget. And they're born into a culture where they take all of their freedoms for granted.

And I'd like to say to the Senate, I hope you will say yes to a stronger American democracy in the year 2000.

And if you look at the experience of Turkey, for example, where the modern Islamists are in power and are doing fine - this is very good. Because democracy is not possible in the Muslim world without bringing in the Islamists or part of the Islamists who hate us now into these governments.

And in Canada we, you know, it costs us three or $400 million to have an election. You know, it's always been my position that we shouldn't complain about that; that's the price of admission for a living in a great democracy.

And one of the frustrating parts, but it's an inherent part of our democracy, is we have separation of powers.

And it was under Wilson that the first great propaganda slogan was coined and emblazoned everywhere, to make Americans start thinking favorably of democracies and forget that we had a republic.

And where else will [Hume,] this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?

And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed

...and was disposed too often to idealize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth and social position which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and odious vice of the Englishman.