Democracy is made up of three elements. One is whether the laws support pluralistic principles. The second is whether the people take advantage of these laws. The third element is whether the peoples' wallets are thick enough to benefit from this democracy.
‐‐ Lech Walesa
Democracy is more than a ballot box.
‐‐ Mohamed ElBaradei
Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism.
‐‐ Benazir Bhutto
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.
‐‐ Archibald MacLeish
Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor.
‐‐ Cory Booker
Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.
‐‐ Michael Moore
Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.
‐‐ Alan Bullock
Democracy is not about one party dominating.
‐‐ Ed Townsend
Democracy is not an instant coffee.
‐‐ Mohamed ElBaradei
Democracy is not compatible with capitalism but is congruent with a version of democratic socialism in which the wealth, resources, and benefits of a social order are shared in an equitable and just manner.
‐‐ Henry Giroux
Democracy is not just an election, it is our daily life.
‐‐ Tsai Ing-wen
Democracy is not just constitutional and legislative rules; it is a culture and practice and adhering by the law and respecting international human rights principles.
‐‐ Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.
‐‐ Howard Rheingold
Democracy is not merely a form of government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence towards fellow men.
‐‐ B. R. Ambedkar
Democracy is not only the right to vote, it is also about not resorting to violence in order to reach political goals and respecting agreements signed by former governments.
‐‐ Tzipi Livni
Democracy is not simply a question of structures. It is a state of mind. It is an activity. And part of that activity is honesty.
‐‐ Rory Stewart
Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.
‐‐ Jim Hightower
Democracy is not something you put away for ten years, and then in the 11th year you wake up and start practicing again. We have to begin to learn to rule ourselves again.
‐‐ Chinua Achebe
Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.
‐‐ Herbert Hoover
Democracy is not the end point of mankind. There may be developments in many different directions in the coming centuries. Democracy has only existed for about 200 years. It started out with the American Declaration of Independence. The Americans got their ideas from the Europeans, in the main from the French, the Dutch and the British.
‐‐ Helmut Schmidt
Democracy is not theater - it determines life and death!
‐‐ Mimi Kennedy
Democracy is not what we don't want. Democracy is what we do want. It is a set of affirmative values by which we can move forward. If we cannot insert our values into our vote, and our vote is simply against what we fear most, then we are a ship lost at sea.
‐‐ Jill Stein
Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.
‐‐ Irving Babbitt
Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.
‐‐ H. L. Mencken
Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.
‐‐ Dean Inge
Democracy is our commitment. It is our great legacy, a legacy we simply cannot compromise. Democracy is in our DNA.
‐‐ Narendra Modi
Democracy is something that you must learn each generation. It has to be taught.
‐‐ Anthony Kennedy
Democracy is still a radical idea in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions.
‐‐ Hillary Clinton
Democracy is stronger than terrorism, and we will not cower to the terrorists' campaign of fear.
‐‐ John Doolittle
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin.
‐‐ Gore Vidal
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
‐‐ H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.
‐‐ Alexander Meiklejohn
Democracy is the common pursuit of mankind, and all countries must earnestly protect the democratic rights of the people.
‐‐ Jinato Hu
Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
‐‐ James Russell Lowell
Democracy is the only civilized way to govern a country.
‐‐ Ricardo Salinas Pliego
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.
‐‐ John Ralston Saul
Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
‐‐ Sydney J. Harris
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
‐‐ Bertrand Russell
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
‐‐ E. B. White
Democracy is the road to socialism.
‐‐ Karl Marx
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
‐‐ H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.
‐‐ Mikhail Gorbachev
Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.
‐‐ Thomas Mann
Democracy is too good to share with just anybody.
‐‐ Nigel Rees
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
‐‐ Aristotle
Democracy is when the people keep a government in check.
‐‐ Aung San Suu Kyi
Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.
‐‐ Ronald Reagan
Democracy isn't just for people in the Middle East, but Britons, too.
‐‐ Heather Brooke
Democracy isn't solely about polite conversations in parliaments. It needs to be continually refreshed with raw passions, anger and ideals.
‐‐ Geoff Mulgan