Quotes on Democracy

The rule of law should be respected so that the basic structure of our democracy is maintained and further strengthened.

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

We recall our terrible past so that we can deal with it, to forgive where forgiveness is necessary, without forgetting; to ensure that never again will such inhumanity tear us apart; and to move ourselves to eradicate a legacy that lurks dangerously as a threat to our democracy.

We, in Africa, have no more need of being 'converted' to socialism than we have of being 'taught' democracy. Both are rooted in our past -- in the traditional society which produced us.

The truest test of a democracy is in the ability of anyone to act as he likes, so long as he does not injure the life or property of anyone else.

The world also remains a hopeful place. Calls for democracy and human rights are being reborn everywhere, and these calls are an expression of support for the values enshrined in the United Nations Charter. They encourage our hopes for a more stable, more peaceful, more prosperous world.

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

I am not running for mayor yet. But if it comes to be true that people cannot voice an opinion unless they have been elected, then we are no longer in a democracy.

That instability is inherent in the nature of popular governments, I think very disputable … A representative democracy, where the right of election is well secured and regulated & the exercise of the legislature, executive, and judiciary authorities, is vested in select persons, chosen really and not nominally by the people, will in my opinion be most likely to be happy, regular and durable.

Democracy -- rule by the people -- sounds like a fine thing; we should try it sometime in America.

America is a land of wonders, in which everything is in constant motion and every change seems an improvement. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and in his eyes what is not yet done is only what he has not attempted to do. - from Democracy in America

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.

The financial system in its current condition poses an existential threat to Western democracy far exceeding any terrorist threat.

Democracy means that if the doorbell rings in the early hours, it is likely to be the milkman.

Democracies succeed or fail based on their journalism. America is strong because its journalism is strong. That is how democracies work. They're only as good as the quality of the information that the public possesses and that is where we come in.

Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent.

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

In a perfect world what poor countries at the lowest rungs of economic development need is not a multi-party democracy, but in fact a decisive benevolent dictator to push through the reforms required to get the economy moving

Democracy will prevail when men believe the vote of Judas as good as that of Jesus Christ.

This democracy of ours, which sometimes we've treated so lightly, is more than ever a comfortable cloak, so let us not tear it asunder, for no man knows, once it is destroyed, where or when he will find its protective warmth again.