Quotes on Democracies Have

The boundaries of democracy have to be widened so as to include economic equality also. This is the great revolution through which we are all passing.

Between a balanced republic and a democracy, the difference is like that between order and chaos.

We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries. What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

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.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

Take not from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.

In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

The major western democracies are moving towards corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies - socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor - and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.