Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.
‐‐ Michael Sandel
Democracy doesn't recognize east or west; democracy is simply people's will. Therefore, I do not acknowledge that there are various models of democracy; there is just democracy itself.
‐‐ Shirin Ebadi
Democracy doesn't require a whole lot of work of its citizens, but it requires some: It requires taking a good look outside once in a while, and considering the bad news and what it might mean, and making the occasional tough choice, and soberly taking stock of what your real interests are.
‐‐ Matt Taibbi
Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid.
‐‐ Bob Dylan
Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.
‐‐ John Simon
Democracy fascinates me.
‐‐ Lee H. Hamilton
Democracy for us tends to be has to do with who shouts the loudest!
‐‐ Peter Hook
Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
‐‐ Agnes Repplier
Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.
‐‐ Rick Perry
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
‐‐ James Russell Lowell
Democracy, good governance and modernity cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country.
‐‐ Emile Lahoud
Democracy has always been in crisis: democracy is all about practicing the art of bearable dissatisfaction. In democratic societies, people often complain about their leaders and their institutions. The gap between the ideal democracy and the existing one cannot be bridged.
‐‐ Ivan Krastev
Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.
‐‐ Paul Johnson
Democracy, if it meant what our forefathers said, that would be great, but unfortunately it's been corrupted by this funding and funding of campaigns. There's a much better way to do it. There could be a small amount of money given by every taxpayer to be dedicated to candidates.
‐‐ George Hamilton
Democracy in China is like Viagra; no such thing as free elections.
‐‐ George Montgomery
Democracy in the studio is overrated. What you wind up getting is compromise on everybody's part, which means that nobody has their way, and that means nobody wins, including the fans.
‐‐ Paul Stanley
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.
‐‐ Ali Abdullah Saleh
Democracy involves that old-fashioned thing called working it out.
‐‐ Peggy Noonan
Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
‐‐ Plato
Democracy is a daring concept - a hope that we'll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.
‐‐ Brian Eno
Democracy is a destiny of humanity which cannot be averted. It can be delayed but not defeated.
‐‐ Eskinder Nega
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
‐‐ George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a good client.
‐‐ Emilio Azcarraga Jean
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
‐‐ H. L. Mencken
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.
‐‐ Joseph A. Schumpeter
Democracy is a process.
‐‐ Paul Wolfowitz
Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
‐‐ Laurence J. Peter
Democracy is a revelation, but it's complicated. There are elections to hold, politics to create, rights to assert, grievances to settle and institutions to build. To many, it's exhilarating. For others, it can be disappointing when it turns out that democracy doesn't immediately make life better.
‐‐ Atifete Jahjaga
Democracy is about non-arbitrary decisions. Democracy is about spreading decisions; it is not about destroying processes.
‐‐ Rahul Gandhi
Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process.
‐‐ Debbie Stabenow
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
‐‐ H. L. Mencken
Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
‐‐ Jorge Luis Borges
Democracy is an experimental system. I like it when states try out new ideas. I think we ought to expand, not contract, our federalist system.
‐‐ Alex Tabarrok
Democracy is an extraordinary adventure. It's difficult, full of daring and risk and danger. But it's the greatest gift we have.
‐‐ Jon Voight
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.
‐‐ Steven Pinker
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
‐‐ Harry Emerson Fosdick
Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.
‐‐ Benito Mussolini
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
‐‐ Robert Byrne
Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world.
‐‐ Mark McKinnon
Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.
‐‐ Abdoulaye Wade
Democracy is dead in the Maldives.
‐‐ Amal Clooney
Democracy is difficult and demanding. So is history. It can crack your voice; it can stir your soul; it can break your heart.
‐‐ Jill Lepore
Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
‐‐ Reinhold Niebuhr
Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
‐‐ Jawaharlal Nehru
Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
‐‐ Vladimir Lenin
Democracy is interactive... It's a constant job of information, education, explanation, listening, and interactive communication.
‐‐ Dick Gephardt
Democracy is just a reflection of our morals and the things that we believe.
‐‐ David Harsanyi
Democracy is liberty - a liberty which does not infringe on the liberty nor encroach on the rights of others; a liberty which maintains strict discipline, and makes law its guarantee and the basis of its exercise. This alone is true liberty; this alone can produce true democracy.
‐‐ Chiang Kai-shek
Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working.
‐‐ Juan Manuel Santos