-
Liberal democracy - as you know, in the old days, we were saying we want socialism with a human face. Today's left effectively offers global capitalism with a human face, more tolerance, more rights and so on. So the question is, is this enough or not? Here I remain a Marxist: I think not.
Author:
Slavoj Zizek
-
The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts - and not absolute and general.
Author:
Jiang Zemin
-
The risk of a terrorist victory is greater when in fighting terror, democracy betrays its own essence.
Author:
Jose Zapatero
-
It's true that the war in Iraq opened a distance in relations between part of Europe and the U.S. government, but our basic ties are stronger than that. We share democracy, free markets and a commitment to Western security. We differ on how to guarantee that security.
Author:
Jose Zapatero
-
We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy, and freedom.
Author:
Shigeru Yoshida
-
A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.
Author:
Frank Wright
-
I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.
Author:
Alexander Woollcott
-
Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.
Author:
Walter Winchell
-
Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.
Author:
Woodrow Wilson
-
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
Author:
Woodrow Wilson
-
My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.
Author:
Woodrow Wilson
-
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
Author:
Woodrow Wilson
-
When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders - to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us.
Author:
Joe Wilson
-
But if we had to trade with a Europe dominated by the present German trade policies, we might have to change our methods to some totalitarian form. This is a prospect that any lover of democracy must view with consternation.
Author:
Wendell Willkie
-
The defense of our democracy against the forces that threaten it from without has made some of its failures to function at home glaringly apparent.
Author:
Wendell Willkie
-
A global democracy works only when countries trust one another.
Author:
Armstrong Williams
-
For starters, this country embodies something utterly unique: History's first democratic empire. Beginning in the post war era, we have used free trade and democracy to create a series of interlocking relationships that end war.
Author:
Armstrong Williams
-
Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.
Author:
Armstrong Williams
-
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Author:
Oscar Wilde
-
I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.
Author:
Walt Whitman
-
The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.
Author:
Theodore White
-
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
Author:
E. White
-
Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.
Author:
Paul Wellstone
-
As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.
Author:
Paul Wellstone
-
The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.
Author:
Paul Wellstone
-
The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.
Author:
Paul Wellstone
-
For not only every democracy, but certainly every republic, bears within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
Author:
Robert Welch
-
And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction.
Author:
Robert Welch
-
Newspapers write ringing editorials declaring that this is and always was a democracy.
Author:
Robert Welch
-
The word democracy comes from the Greek and means, literally, government by the people.
Author:
Robert Welch
-
I think if people value democracy, they had damn well better get out and exercise their right to vote while their vote still means something.
Author:
Bob Weir
-
Throughout American history many of our social gains and much of our progress toward democracy were made possible by the active intervention of the federal government.
Author:
Harold Washington
-
This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.
Author:
Henry Wallace
-
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.
Author:
Henry Wallace
-
Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise.
Author:
Henry Wallace
-
In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.
Author:
Henry Wallace
-
The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan.
Author:
Henry Wallace
-
If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and 'with malice toward none and charity for all' go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.
Author:
Henry Wallace
-
Since President Bush took office in 2001, this Congress has supported an agenda of democracy, freedom and expansion of rights for all peoples throughout the world.
Author:
Ginny Waite
-
While Kuwait is not a democracy, giving only half the population a voice in their government is not a policy this Congress should support and one that I am glad that Kuwait's leaders are changing.
Author:
Ginny Waite
-
I told the students that we can exert pressure without resorting to violence, and that we can move towards democracy without violence; that way, God will allow it.
Author:
Abdurrahman Wahid
-
Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.
Author:
Abdoulaye Wade
-
Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.
Author:
Gijs Vries
-
An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Author:
Voltaire
-
The ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
Author:
Voltaire
-
Democracy is an extraordinary adventure. It's difficult, full of daring and risk and danger. But it's the greatest gift we have.
Author:
Jon Voight
-
The great thing about our system of democracy is when they call you for jury duty, you have to come... It's an honor and a privilege. I was called and I've got to be here.
Author:
Antonio Villaraigosa
-
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Author:
Gore Vidal
-
Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.
Author:
Gore Vidal
-
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
Author:
Gore Vidal
-
We're not a democracy.
Author:
Gore Vidal
-
Everybody has a right to be defended, and every lawyer has a duty to defend people accused. And my office is to defend him, to discuss the accusation point by point, as I think this is a normal step in a democracy.
Author:
Jacques Verges
-
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
Author:
Bill Vaughan
-
Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.
Author:
Peter Ustinov
-
The nature of a democracy consists to an important degree in the right of the people to criticize problems and mistakes.
Author:
Walter Ulbricht
-
Two hundred years ago, our Founding Fathers gave us a democracy. It was based upon the simple, yet noble, idea that government derives its validity from the consent of the governed.
Author:
Paul Tsongas
-
In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root.
Author:
Paul Tsongas
-
Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well.
Author:
Dalton Trumbo
-
Democracy is not about one party dominating.
Author:
Ed Townsend
-
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Author:
Alexis Tocqueville
-
What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.
Author:
Alexis Tocqueville
-
And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up.
Author:
Fred Thompson
-
You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.
Author:
Helen Thomas
-
We in the press have a special role since there is no other institution in our society that can hold the President accountable. I do believe that our democracy can endure and prevail only if the American people are informed.
Author:
Helen Thomas
-
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.
Author:
Amber Tamblyn
-
My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.
Author:
Jalal Talabani
-
This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we're not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there.
Author:
George Takei
-
But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.
Author:
Antonio Tabucchi
-
In real danger sometimes even a democracy can really keep a secret.
Author:
Stuart Symington
-
The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.
Author:
Algernon Sydney
-
We can no longer allow multinationals to parade as agents of progress and democracy in the newspapers, even as they subvert it at the workplace.
Author:
John Sweeney
-
Now that we have a democracy and you can go back and the airport air is not laden with evil any more, you can actually breathe oxygen when you land in Johannesburg.
Author:
Janet Suzman
-
Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.
Author:
Helen Suzman
-
People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.
Author:
Simeon Strunsky
-
In this film George presents issues that are important, essential and vital, whoever you are, about constitutional rights and the bedrock of a democracy. I am drawn to those kinds of stories because they inspire me - they are responsible to a populace and responsible to man.
Author:
David Strathairn
-
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
Author:
Tom Stoppard
-
Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.
Author:
Harlan Stone
-
As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
Author:
Adlai Stevenson
-
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
Author:
Adlai Stevenson
-
Thru the auspices of the viewers who become - I think this is an import - in a democracy, become a working unit with law enforcement against the criminals.
Author:
Robert Stack
-
The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.
Author:
Anna Spencer
-
We know that if we're going to remain economically competitive in the world, and viable as a civic democracy, that we're going to have to get more people educated to higher levels.
Author:
Margaret Spellings
-
Voting is fundamental in our democracy. It has yielded enormous returns.
Author:
Arlen Specter
-
The essence of a democracy is a free electorate.
Author:
Arlen Specter
-
I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy, civil liberties and an open society.
Author:
George Soros
-
A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.
Author:
George Soros
-
To my mind, there is a solution which has to do with democracy, because democratic governments are subject to the will of the people. So, if the people will it, you can actually create international institutions through the democratic states.
Author:
George Soros
-
The good news, to relieve all this gloom, is that a democracy is inherently self-correcting. Here, the people are sovereign. Inept political leaders can be replaced. Foolish policies can be changed. Disastrous mistakes can be reversed.
Author:
Theodore Sorensen
-
If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: "Thou shalt not ration justice."
Author:
Sophocles
-
What we say is that democracy means that you have the right to vote without intimidation and undue burdens. But if you stand in line for six hours, technically, today there is no document, no standard, no law that says that that's wrong.
Author:
DeForest Soaries
-
The Election Assistance Commission represents a major, unprecedented commitment from the federal government to sustained freedom and vibrant democracy. I am humbled by the prospect of being one its charter members.
Author:
DeForest Soaries
-
When public access to voting is impaired or when public confidence in voting is diluted, democracy suffers and our freedom is less secure.
Author:
DeForest Soaries
-
It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
Author:
Alfred Smith
-
All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
Author:
Alfred Smith
-
Nobody should be allowed to tinker with democracy. We will not discontinue the good works of the past government.
Author:
Manmohan Singh
-
It means that, in fact, it's - whether fascist is the right word I don't know - more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.
Author:
Peter Singer
-
I'm not overly alarmist about it, but I do think there are some worrying signs, like the growing accumulation of wealth by a very small proportion of the population, plus elections in the US are much more dominated by money than anywhere else calling itself a democracy.
Author:
Peter Singer
-
It has been well over half a century and I'm glad to say we have taken the right path from authoritarianism to democracy and this is a road of no return.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
I have great confidence in Taiwan's democracy.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
I believe in the greatness of our democracy.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
However, I must say that I am very happy to see that we have such a positive result for our first referendum in our history and that gives me more confidence in Taiwan's democracy.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
Even if I were knocked down by one gunshot it wouldn't affect our democracy and I wasn't knocked down and I have great confidence in our democracy and in Taiwan and in the people of Taiwan.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
We have had a long wait for democracy.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
The grandeur and strength or our people and democracy are as big as a forest.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
The road to democracy may be winding and is like a river taking many curves, but eventually the river will reach the ocean.
Author:
Chen Shui-bian
-
I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinising and pressing to get the truth out.
Author:
Clare Short
-
Democracy's a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it's no longer democracy, is it? It's something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.
Author:
Sam Shepard
-
We cannot cut and run. If we are to ensure freedom and democracy, it is essential that we follow through on our obligation to bring about stability in Iraq.
Author:
Richard Shelby
-
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Author:
George Shaw
-
Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Author:
George Shaw
-
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
Author:
George Shaw
-
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.
Author:
Fiona Shaw
-
The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain.
Author:
Fiona Shaw
-
The two most important things that can be done to promote democracy in the world is first, to bring moral clarity back to world affairs and second, to link international policies to the advance of democracy around the globe.
Author:
Natan Sharansky
-
The three main sources of scepticism are first, that not every people desires freedom; second, that democracy in certain parts of the world would be dangerous; and third, that there is little the world's democracies can do to advance freedom outside their countries.
Author:
Natan Sharansky
-
It is important to remember that some of the most serious thinkers once thought that democracy was not compatible with the cultures of Germany, Italy, Japan, Latin America and Russia.
Author:
Natan Sharansky
-
By helping readers understand these mechanics, I hope they will appreciate why freedom is for everyone, why it is essential for our security and why the free world plays a critically important role in advancing democracy around the globe.
Author:
Natan Sharansky
-
Japan is not a Western democracy. The Japanese have kept their traditions, culture and heritage, but they have joined the community of free nations.
Author:
Natan Sharansky
-
My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.
Author:
Natan Sharansky
-
It's not a democracy here, it's the Middle East.
Author:
Silvan Shalom
-
The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it.
Author:
Horatio Seymour
-
Under the leadership of this President, the state of the union is not strong. We are being pulled apart rather than pulling together. Our democracy is suffering from the choices being made, and yet we are offered the same tired excuses and unrealistic analyses.
Author:
Jose Serrano
-
The elections that have taken place in these countries are a reflection of the lure of Democracy, and the resilience of our men and women in uniform who helped bring freedom to many who never knew what the word truly meant.
Author:
Jim Sensenbrenner
-
Let me reassure that the Kingdom of Cambodia a country with independence, neutrality, peace, freedom, democracy and human rights as you all have seen, shall be existing with no end.
Author:
Hun Sen
-
When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.
Author:
Charles Secondat
-
I've always been very interested in the struggle for human rights, not just here but abroad, and I wanted to be an inside player in that struggle. I wanted to make the laws reflect our ideals and ideas in this democracy that is America.
Author:
Leah Sears
-
After all, we didn't bring democracy to Germany in 1945; Hitler destroyed democracy there first.
Author:
Brent Scowcroft
-
America has never seen itself as a national state like all others, but rather as an experiment in human freedom and democracy.
Author:
Brent Scowcroft
-
Saddam's ouster will not necessarily lead to the same result, since Iraq lacks democratic traditions. Democracy doesn't just consist of holding elections.
Author:
Brent Scowcroft
-
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
Author:
Jack Schwartz
-
It would be hard to ignore the absence of democracy in any Arab nation.
Author:
Jack Schwartz
-
Even though the Bush campaign ad tells you that Afghanistan is a new democracy at the Olympics because of Bush's efforts, Afghanistan hasn't actually had an election.
Author:
Peter Schuyler
-
Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.
Author:
Joseph Schumpeter
-
Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political - legislative and administrative - decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.
Author:
Joseph Schumpeter
-
Since the birth of our Nation, no other right has been more important than having the ability to vote. Unfortunately, as history has shown, the denial of this right to minorities is a scar on our system of democracy.
Author:
Jan Schakowsky
-
My argument has always been that this is not an anti-Bush film, it's a pro-democracy film. And if Bush comes out on the wrong side of democracy, that's his problem.
Author:
John Sayles
-
If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is after all not a natural state.
Author:
John Saul
-
Democracy is the only system capable of reflecting the humanist premise of equilibrium or balance. The key to its secret is the involvement of the citizen.
Author:
John Saul
-
In order every one in our homeland learns principles of democracy and the peaceful transition of power, and in order to stabilize and develop multiple choices in democratic practice.
Author:
Ali Saleh
-
Democracy in Yemen did not stop, instead it is in a continuous development, there is no other way to follow rather than democracy, it is our national way for building up our country, it was not imposed on us by others.
Author:
Ali Saleh
-
The US has not imposed democracy in Yemen, its people have.
Author:
Ali Saleh
-
We're going to have to forgive a great deal of the Soviet era debt. There's no question about that. Let's face up to that. We're going to have to put in money if Russia is really going to consolidate a democracy.
Author:
Jeffrey Sachs
-
Protection of private property is a fundamental right protected in a strong democracy.
Author:
Jim Ryun
-
The issue is whether the ultimate civil authority of the United States can tolerate actions in contempt of constitutional lines of authority. Any lessening of civil power over military power must inevitably lead away from democracy.
Author:
Harold Russell
-
Democracy can only spring from practising it early, and democratic action was not to expected from young people brought up under a close authoritarian system.
Author:
Dora Russell
-
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Author:
Bertrand Russell
-
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
Author:
Bertrand Russell
-
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Author:
Franklin Roosevelt
-
Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.
Author:
Franklin Roosevelt
-
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
Author:
Will Rogers
-
We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.
Author:
James Rogers
-
Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.
Author:
Maximilien Robespierre
-
But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
Author:
Pat Robertson
-
There's an assault on human sexuality, as Judge Scalia said, they've taken sides in the culture war and on top of that if we have a democracy, the democratic processes should be that we can elect representatives who will share our point of view and vote those things into law.
Author:
Pat Robertson
-
The President, in talking about freedom and democracy, is sparking a wave of very positive democratic sentiment that might help us override both Islamic fundamentalism that has formed in that region, and also some of the hatred for our policies of invading Iraq.
Author:
Bill Richardson
-
Now, al Qaeda's on the run. Afghanistan is no longer a base of operations. The Afghan government is a friendly government that is trying to bring democracy to its people.
Author:
Condoleezza Rice
-
Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
Author:
Agnes Repplier
-
Liberals are concerned about the concentration of wealth because it almost inevitably leads to a concentration of power that undermines democracy.
Author:
Robert Reich
-
Democracy is too good to share with just anybody.
Author:
Nigel Rees
-
We need to remind our core supporters that we have not forgotten their concern with the way our democracy is being replaced by European bureaucracy in so many areas.
Author:
John Redwood
-
Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.
Author:
Ronald Reagan
-
Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.
Author:
Ronald Reagan
-
Standards of conduct appropriate to civil society or the workings of a democracy cannot be purely and simply applied to the Church.
Author:
Joseph Ratzinger
-
Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy.
Author:
Dan Rather
-
Small use it will be to save democracy for the race if we cannot save the race for democracy.
Author:
Jeanette Rankin
-
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was indeed a vital instrument of democracy, ensuring the integrity and reliability of a democratic process that we as a Country hold so dear.
Author:
Charles Rangel
-
El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans... I have heard a single voice.
Author:
Dan Quayle
-
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.
Author:
Dan Quayle
-
Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.
Author:
Vladimir Putin
-
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor the greatest champion of racial equality who taught a nation - through compassion and courage - about democracy, nonviolence and racial justice.
Author:
Mark Pryor
-
Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.
Author:
J. Priestley
-
In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
Author:
John Polanyi
-
Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
Author:
Plato
-
Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
Author:
Plato
-
Democracy passes into despotism.
Author:
Plato
-
Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.
Author:
Plato
-
Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.
Author:
Augusto Pinochet
-
A healthy democracy requires a decent society; it requires that we are honorable, generous, tolerant and respectful.
Author:
Charles Pickering
-
Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Author:
Laurence Peter
-
Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.
Author:
Rick Perry
-
Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.
Author:
Shimon Peres
-
One has the right to be wrong in a democracy.
Author:
Claude Pepper
-
Let's win the peace and democracy the good people of Iraq so richly deserve after decades of tyranny.
Author:
Mike Pence
-
Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy.
Author:
Ron Paul
-
We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.
Author:
Alice Paul
-
In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.
Author:
Chris Patten
-
In democracy everyone has the right to be represented, even the jerks.
Author:
Chris Patten
-
And one of the frustrating parts, but it's an inherent part of our democracy, is we have separation of powers.
Author:
George Pataki
-
The rights of democracy are not reserved for a select group within society, they are the rights of all the people.
Author:
Olof Palme
-
For us democracy is a question of human dignity. And human dignity is political freedom.
Author:
Olof Palme
-
Despite what the pundits want us to think, contested primaries aren't civil war, they are democracy at work, and that's beautiful.
Author:
Sarah Palin
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My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm - as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy.
Author:
Camille Paglia
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It will take years to bring Iraq the democracy it deserves.
Author:
Bill Owens
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And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed.
Author:
Lee Oswald
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It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.
Author:
George Orwell
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Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
Author:
P. O'Rourke
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Inflation is bringing us true democracy. For the first time in history, luxuries and necessities are selling at the same price.
Author:
Robert Orben
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We are losing the democracy that we're trying to sell in the Mideast and everywhere else right here in our own nation.
Author:
Rosie O'Donnell
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The equality that we are all entitled to, as citizens of this democracy, can't be avoided by some religious dogma of a President who's is supposed to believe in the notion of separation of church and state. And he frankly doesn't.
Author:
Rosie O'Donnell
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Unfortunately, the true force which propels our endless political disputes, our constant struggles for political advantage, is often not our burning concern for democracy, it is often of our dedication to the principle of the rule of law.
Author:
Olusegun Obasanjo
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Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men.
Author:
Novalis
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Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.
Author:
Michael Novak
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Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
Author:
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Author:
Reinhold Niebuhr
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Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
Author:
Jawaharlal Nehru
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Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.
Author:
Jawaharlal Nehru
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Well my briefing was that Honduras was a small and vulnerable country just back on the path towards democracy it was about to have just before I arrived, the first elections for a civilian president in more than 9 years.
Author:
John Negroponte
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Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression.
Author:
Taslima Nasrin
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Once you don't vote your ideals... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy.
Author:
Ralph Nader
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There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
Author:
Ralph Nader
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Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.
Author:
Benito Mussolini
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The true victory is the victory for democracy and pluralism.
Author:
Hosni Mubarak
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Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn't.
Author:
Bill Moyers
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Democracy belongs to those who exercise it.
Author:
Bill Moyers
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America's corporate and political elites now form a regime of their own and they're privatizing democracy. All the benefits - the tax cuts, policies and rewards flow in one direction: up.
Author:
Bill Moyers
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Our constancy, same might call it our madness, was necessary to wear down the oppressive forces of the old democracy which, in Spain, was a hundred years behind the times.
Author:
Frederica Montseny
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Democracy in China is like Viagra; no such thing as free elections.
Author:
George Montgomery
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The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
Author:
Charles Montesquieu
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We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn't like. It has no resemblance to democracy.
Author:
Joni Mitchell
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Democracy is hypocrisy without limitation.
Author:
Iskander Mirza
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We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect. Our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they are sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.
Author:
Jeff Miller
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Don't ever dare to take your college as a matter of course - because, like democracy and freedom, many people you'll never know have broken their hearts to get it for you.
Author:
Alice Miller
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The American system of democracy is founded on the concept that every citizen has the right to vote, to know that their vote is counted, and that the vote is counted accurately.
Author:
Barbara Mikulski
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Here's to democracy. May we get the government we deserve.
Author:
Rick Mercer
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We should seek international support for our mutual objectives abroad, in promoting freedom, democracy, respect for human rights, and also the elimination of weapons of mass destruction.
Author:
Robert Menendez
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I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
Author:
H. Mencken
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Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
Author:
H. Mencken
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Author:
H. Mencken
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Author:
H. Mencken
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Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
Author:
H. Mencken
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Author:
H. Mencken
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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.
Author:
H. Mencken
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There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals.
Author:
Herman Melville
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Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.
Author:
Alexander Meiklejohn
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This election marks a significant moment in Haiti; it not only serves as the basis of hope along the road to democracy, but also serves as a testament to the resolve and character of the Haitian people during their long struggle for peace, reconciliation, and prosperity.
Author:
Kendrick Meek
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We have, essentially, a worthless democracy.
Author:
Aaron McGruder
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You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.
Author:
David McCullough
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Democracy is the road to socialism.
Author:
Karl Marx
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We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
Author:
Wynton Marsalis
-
It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans. In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American democracy and American glory.
Author:
Wynton Marsalis
-
I have absolutely no idea what my generation did to enrich our democracy. We dropped the ball. We entered a period of complacency and closed our eyes to the public corruption of our democracy.
Author:
Wynton Marsalis
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Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.
Author:
Thomas Mann
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It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
Author:
Thomas Mann
-
Socialist democracy is not, a luxury and its need is not limited to the most advanced industrial countries.
Author:
Ernest Mandel
-
Communism destroys democracy. Democracy can also destroy Communism.
Author:
Andre Malraux
-
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.
Author:
Norman Mailer
-
As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.
Author:
Naguib Mahfouz
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In Egypt today most people are concerned with getting bread to eat. Only some of the educated understand how democracy works.
Author:
Naguib Mahfouz
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A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
Author:
James Madison
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Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.
Author:
Archibald MacLeish
-
In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace.
Author:
Wangari Maathai
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You do not export democracy through the Defense Department or the Defense Secretary. You do it through trade agreements, through the Department of Commerce and favorable agreements with our friends and neighbors across the globe.
Author:
Stephen Lynch
-
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.
Author:
Stephen Lynch
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The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.
Author:
Rosa Luxemburg
-
Social democracy... is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh.
Author:
Rosa Luxemburg
-
Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.
Author:
Rosa Luxemburg
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Despite elections and the experience of post-Soviet personal freedoms by the Russian people, the fate of democracy in Russia is perhaps more ambiguous now than at any time since the collapse of the Communist system.
Author:
Richard Lugar
-
And in a democracy, when we say we're mad at what's going on, what we need to be saying is we're mad at ourselves.
Author:
Mike Lowry
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I have always been of the mind that in a democracy manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie-knife.
Author:
James Lowell
-
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Author:
James Lowell
-
Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Author:
James Lowell
-
If we expose the Chinese to our freedoms, it may create a greater hunger for democracy, reform and liberties in China.
Author:
Gary Locke
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If our republican form of government is perishing because communications - the infrastructure of that republic - is under the yoke of international business how, at last, do we save it? We must build a confrontational movement to reclaim our democracy, a movement committed to active and sustained protest against the present order.
Author:
Mark Lloyd
-
Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.
Author:
Mario Llosa
-
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
Author:
Walter Lippmann
-
Speak up! We live in a democracy. We all need to make sure our voices are heard and our opinions are known.
Author:
Bill Lipinski
-
Global markets must be balanced by global values such as respect for human rights and international law, democracy, security and sustainable economic and environmental development.
Author:
Anna Lindh
-
Voters must have faith in the electoral process for our democracy to succeed.
Author:
Blanche Lincoln
-
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Author:
Abraham Lincoln
-
I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy.
Author:
A. Liebling
-
Passive fatalism can never be the role of a revolutionary party, like the Social Democracy.
Author:
Karl Liebknecht
-
Class struggle: external peace, international solidarity, peace among peoples. This is the sacred slogan of international socialist democracy that liberates nations.
Author:
Karl Liebknecht
-
I also know that there have been many times in our history when the proximity of an election has induced exactly the kind of leadership and consensus-building that produce progress in our democracy.
Author:
Joe Lieberman
-
Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom, but it isn't alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.
Author:
Flora Lewis
-
If we have a chance of succeeding and bringing stability and democracy to Iraq, it will mean learning from our mistakes, not denying them and not ignoring them.
Author:
Carl Levin
-
Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
Author:
Vladimir Lenin
-
If we don't have an informed electorate we don't have a democracy. So I don't care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I'm just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.
Author:
Jim Lehrer
-
Democracy is fatal for the arts; it leads only to chaos or the achievement of new and lower common denominators of quality.
Author:
Walter Legge
-
The last two elections were stolen. They were stolen and so we will not rest until we reclaim our democracy and this is what today is all about.
Author:
Barbara Lee
-
On a Chinese film you just give orders, no one questions you. Here, you have to convince people, you have to tell them why you want to do it a certain way, and they argue with you. Democracy.
Author:
Ang Lee
-
In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.
Author:
Fran Lebowitz
-
As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh.
Author:
Aleksandr Lebed
-
In order to build basic democracy here we'll need lives of two generations - at least forty years.
Author:
Aleksandr Lebed
-
The more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else.
Author:
David Lawrence
-
Democracy still has a real hope and chance in Iraq, and true freedom in this country would be the greatest testament to those who gave their lives for it.
Author:
Mary Landrieu
-
Moreover, as we live in an era of the ascendancy of democracy and human rights, we must see that Taiwan has been a vibrant democracy with a democratically elected president and legislature.
Author:
Nick Lampson
-
Free nations of the world cannot allow Taiwan, a beacon of democracy, to be subdued by an authoritarian China.
Author:
Nick Lampson
-
To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.
Author:
Louis L'Amour
-
Democracy, good governance and modernity cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country.
Author:
Emile Lahud
-
We Chileans have to be able to understand that in a democracy institutions must function freely and with sovereignty.
Author:
Ricardo Lagos
-
The democracy process provides for political and social change without violence.
Author:
Aung Kyi
-
If the war has faded into history, democracy's defeat in Vietnam has left deep marks in the consciousness of both nations.
Author:
Nguyen Ky
-
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Author:
Irving Kristol
-
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
Author:
Karl Kraus
-
Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
Author:
Karl Kraus
-
Capitalism and the market are presented as synonymous, but they are not. Capitalism is both the enemy of the market and democracy.
Author:
David Korten
-
The EU will face problems similar to the US: an increasing gap between the citizens and decision makers in Brussels and a perceived or even real lack of democracy.
Author:
David Korten
-
In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.
Author:
Lincoln Kirstein
-
I always assume that democracy is the only good form of government, quite frankly, and democracy is always to be preferred.
Author:
Jeane Kirkpatrick
-
Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal.
Author:
Jeane Kirkpatrick
