Quotes on Democracy

You’re talking about Rwanda or Bangladesh, or Cambodia, or the Philippines. They’ve got democracy, according to Freedom House. But have you got a civilised life to lead? People want economic development first and foremost. The leaders may talk something else. You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.

The United States is no more a Christian nation because most of its citizens are Christians than it is a 'white' nation because most of its citizens are white. We are Americans because we practice democracy and believe in republican government, not because we practice revealed religion and believe in Bible-based government.

Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth.

Humanity’s greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

Representative democracy is a remarkably blunt instrument. Hundreds of issues are bundled together at every election, yet the vote tends to swing on just one or two of them.

Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something.

I don't have any formula for ousting a dictator or building democracy. All I can suggest is to forget about yourself and just think of your people. It's always the people who make things happen.

Nelson Mandela represents an enduring example of the human spirit and he proved for eternity that the ideals of democracy and human rights can overcome even the direst of circumstances.

A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.

The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it.

An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of Democracy

There is an old saying that the course of civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. In a democracy such as ours, we must make sure that education wins the race.

Our democracy's history is littered with names we neither remember nor celebrate - people who stood in the way of progress while protecting the powerful. On Wednesday, a number of senators voted to join that list.

Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant.

Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!

The spirit of democracy... requires change of the heart... requires the inculcation of the spirit of brotherhood.

Americans are a very backward people, with all the real virtues of a backward people; the patriarchal simplicity and human dignity of a democracy, and a respect for labor uncorrupted by cynicism.

What, after all, is the public under present conditions? What are the reasons for its eclipse? What hinders it from finding and identifying itself? By what means shall its inchoate and amorphous estate be organized into effective political action relevant to present social needs and opportunities? What has happened to the public in the century and a half since the theory of political democracy was urged with such assurance and hope?

Civility is not a tactic or a sentiment. It is the determined choice of trust over cynicism, of community over chaos.