Best 3411 quotes in «democracy quotes» category

A legitimate democracy cannot act against a terror organization because it is using civilians as a human shield, and therefore it should absorb attacks on its own civilians.

All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual.

All democracies are based on the proposition that power is very dangerous and that it is extremely important not to let any one person or small group have too much power for too long a time

All extremes are bad. All that is good and useful, if carried to extremes, may become-and beyond a certain limit is bound to become-bad and injurious.

Alliances are crucial to success in the political sphere. However, if we are to approach other organizations to propose alliances for the public good, we must be prepared to assert a far more important role for the library. We must clearly define what we do and establish and assert the relationship of libraries to basic democratic freedoms, to the fundamental humanistic principles that are central to our very way of life. . . .

All men are capable of reason. That is the fundamental principle of democracy Because everybody's mind is capable of true knowledge, you don't have to have a special authority, or a special revelation telling you that this is the way things should be.

All murder is a tragedy but when journalists are killed, public debate loses a voice that can provide an important contribution to democracy. It is essential that governments do all they can to ensure safe conditions for journalists to carry out their work.

All of the dirty tricks, basically, the Russians employ to tear down liberal democracy, we need to work together on a bipartisan basis, and we need the president Trump help. We can't do it alone. And that has to begin by his acknowledgment of the facts.

All political institutions are manifestations and materializations of power; they petrify and decay as soon as the living power of the people ceases to uphold them.

All such men are, or ought to be, agreed, that simple governments are despotisms; and of all despotisms, a democracy, though the least durable, is the most violent.

All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.

All the more reason we need to stand up for our democracy now. If we're going to solve the crises that are barreling down on us, we need democracy, and our democracy needs to start with an open and inclusive debate. That doesn't mean 20 candidates. There are four candidates who are on the ballot for just about every voter in America.

All the people ought to decide, but now most states are tossed on the scrap heap and ignored

All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them.

Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.

A love of the republic in a democracy is a love of the democracy, as the latter is that of equality. A love of the democracy is likewise that of frugality. Since every individual ought here to enjoy the same happiness, and the same advantages, they should consequently taste the same pleasures and form the same hopes, which cannot be expected but from a general frugality.

A lot of young poets today, from what I've heard and experienced, can't get their heads past George W. Bush, and I've heard so many poems about this democracy and this era of politics that I'm kind of bored by it

Although Christianity has never been the guarantee of a democratic state anywhere in the world, no democracy has ever thrived successfully for any period of time outside of Christian influence.

A man is judged by the company he keeps, and a company is judged by the men it keeps, and the people of Democratic nations are judged by the type and caliber of officers they elect.

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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 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 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.

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.

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

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.