I work for him despite his faults and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies.
Bill MoyersRead
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.
Interpretation
Democracy may not be the most efficient form of government, but it gives us the freedom to critique it.
This quote by Bill Moyers highlights the unique value of democracy, which lies in its capacity to allow citizens to recognize and voice their dissatisfaction with the governance they experience. While other forms of government might achieve efficiency, they often do so at the cost of individual freedoms and the ability to critique authority, thereby making democracy distinctively valuable despite its potential inefficiencies.
In practice
During a political debate, to emphasize the importance of democratic freedoms.
I work for him despite his faults and he lets me work for him despite my deficiencies.
This is the first time in my 32 years in public broadcasting that PBS has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons.
Capitalism is out of control, thanks in no small part to Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision which said that a corporation is a person, even though it doesn't eat, drink, make love, sing, raise children or take care of aging parents. You can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations are considered people.
I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one
When I learn something new - and it happens every day - I feel a little more at home in this universe, a little more comfortable in the nest.
Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.
I can't admit to myself that the creation of a Palestinian state won't happen. What I know is that with each passing year it gets more and more difficult to happen, not least because there is more and more bloodshed, generation upon generation.
Autocratic power requires the degradation of moral authority - not the capture of moral high ground.
In a dying civilization, political prestige is the reward not of the shrewdest diagnostician, but of the man with the best bedside manner.
An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of Democracy
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