Quotes on Democracy

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.

In democratic centuries, on the contrary, when the duties of each individual toward the species are much clearer, devotion toward one man becomes rarer: the bond of human affections is extended and loosened.

Good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great.

I do not believe 'Newsweek' is the only catcher in the rye between democracy and ignorance, but I think we're one of them, and I don't think there are that many on the edge of that cliff.

It is the Soviet Union that runs against the tide of history . . . . [It is] the march of freedom and democracy which will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history, as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.

Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.

The capitalistic social order, therefore, is an economic democracy in the strictest sense of the word. In the last analysis, all decisions are dependent on the will of the people as consumers. Thus, whenever there is a conflict between the consumers' views and those of the business managers, market pressures assure that the views of the consumers win out eventually.

Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. Democracy will rise superior to the money power.

Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.

The Republic may not give wealth or happiness, she has not promised these. It is the freedom to pursue these, not their realization, we can claim.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

Liberty is the soul's right to breathe.

America's experiment with government of the people, by the people, and for the people depends not only on constitutional structure and organization but also on the commitment, person to person, that we make to each other.

Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.

Democracy is moral before it is political.

If we incline too much to democracy, we shall soon shoot into a monarchy.

It is one of the evils of democratical governments, that the people, not always seeing and frequently misled, must often feel before they can act.

Democracy must first be safe for America before it can be safe for the world.

Every democratic system evolves its own conventions. It is not only the water but the banks which make the river.

When women are pessimistic about their political strength and feel hopeless about changing the conditions of their lives, it is almost as if they do not believe that democracy means the country belongs to them. But it's true.