All Quotes

Democracy, it appears, is a bit chancy. But its chances also depend on what we do ourselves.
‐‐ Robert A. Dahl

Democracy just isn't working any more; without sanity at its heart, it is becoming a most unique and fiendish tyranny.
‐‐ Michael Leunig

Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits.
‐‐ Elizabeth Drew

Democracy literally means the power of people. Democracy is not about politics, it is about the people.
‐‐ Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj

Democracy, loudly upheld as a cure for much of the ailing world, has proved no guarantor of political wisdom, even if it remains the least bad form of government.
‐‐ Pankaj Mishra

Democracy makes us articulate our views, defend them, and refine them.
‐‐ Lee H. Hamilton

Democracy matters because it reflects an idea of equality and an idea of liberty. It reflects an idea of dignity, the dignity of the individual, the idea that each individual should have an equal vote, an equal say, in the formation of their government.
‐‐ Rory Stewart

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.
‐‐ Flora Lewis

Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.
‐‐ Herbert Croly

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.
‐‐ Bill Moyers

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
‐‐ Clement Attlee

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
‐‐ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
‐‐ Oscar Wilde

Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.
‐‐ Johnny Carson

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.
‐‐ Dalton Trumbo

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.
‐‐ Karl Kraus

Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation.
‐‐ Atifete Jahjaga

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
‐‐ James Bovard

Democracy must learn to defend itself.
‐‐ Mikhail Gorbachev

Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies.
‐‐ Benazir Bhutto

Democracy no longer means what it was meant to. It has been taken back into the workshop. Each of its institutions has been hollowed out, and it has been returned to us as a vehicle for the free market, of the corporations. For the corporations, by the corporations.
‐‐ Arundhati Roy

Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal.
‐‐ Jeane Kirkpatrick

Democracy, obviously, is something we don't want to give up, but it does create chaos. It means the guy next door can do what he wants, and it creates a collision of thinking. In cities, that means people build whatever they want.
‐‐ Frank Gehry

Democracy opens new vistas and opportunities. We should use the opportunities it offers to correct past mistakes not to blunder anew.
‐‐ Ibrahim Babangida

Democracy - or any improvement on it - will rest on the layman's right to criticize. His criticism will be often - very often - damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate.
‐‐ Louis MacNeice

Democracy passes into despotism.
‐‐ Plato

Democracy presumes that we're all created equal; competition proves we are not, or else every race would end in a tie.
‐‐ Nancy Gibbs

Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization.
‐‐ Louis D. Brandeis

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.
‐‐ Sam Shepard

Democracy should be practiced not every six years, but every day.
‐‐ Gael Garcia Bernal

Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.
‐‐ Andrew Jackson

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.
‐‐ Mary Landrieu

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
‐‐ George Bernard Shaw

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
‐‐ John Adams

Democracy without morality is impossible.
‐‐ Jack Kemp

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.
‐‐ Penn Jillette

Democrat leaders are not only out of the American mainstream, but are also out of the Democratic mainstream.
‐‐ Virginia Foxx

Democrat women lead the way in showing other women how to be stepped on and diminished by men. That's what they do, for a payoff somewhere down the line.
‐‐ Rush Limbaugh

Democratic candidates who run from President Obama in red states where he is unpopular are making a big mistake. Their holding Obama at arm's length deprives voters of a clear choice at the ballot box.
‐‐ Donna Brazile

Democratic constitutions do allow some suspension of rights in states of emergency. Thus rights are not always trumps. But neither is necessity. Even in times of real danger, political authorities have to prove the case that abridgments of rights are justified.
‐‐ Michael Ignatieff

Democratic elections alone do not remedy the crisis of confidence in government. Moreover, there is no viable justification for a democratic system in which public participation is limited to voting.
‐‐ Beth Simone Noveck

Democratic forms of government are vulnerable to mass prejudice, the so-called tyranny of the majority.
‐‐ Maggie Gallagher

Democratic institutions are based on a reality of human nature: that those with power, however benign or even noble their intentions, will do what they can to keep it.
‐‐ Rebecca MacKinnon

Democratic leaders always seem to blame America first.
‐‐ Ken Mehlman

Democratic leaders, whose power is ultimately dependent on popular support, are held accountable for failing to improve the lives of their citizens. Therefore, they have a powerful incentive to keep their societies peaceful and prosperous.
‐‐ Natan Sharansky

Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.
‐‐ Geoff Mulgan

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.
‐‐ Margaret Thatcher

Democratic politicians have disliked things I've written, Republican politicians... if they all love you, you might as well be driving a Good Humor truck.
‐‐ Adam Clymer

Democratic politicians, liberal activists and liberal news outlets routinely deploy incendiary rhetoric and wicked accusations to marginalize Republicans.
‐‐ Gary Bauer