Quotes on Democracy

Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming, rather than being. It can be easily lost, but is never finally won.

Democracy is never a final achievement. It is a call to an untiring effort.

The effect of a representative democracy is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation.

What I want is to get done what the people desire to have done, and the question for me is how to find that out exactly.

The purpose of democracy - supplanting old belief in the necessary absoluteness of establish'd dynastic rulership, temporal, ecclesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the only security against chaos, crime, and ignorance - is, through many transmigrations, and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and ostensible failures

There is but one method of rendering a republican form of government durable, and that is by disseminating the seeds of virtue and knowledge through every part of the state by means of proper places and modes of education and this can be done effectively only by the aid of the legislature.

If information is the currency of democracy, then libraries are its banks.

Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

It is better that a man should tyrannize over his bank balance than over his fellow-citizens.

Democracies don't prepare well for things that have never happened before.

It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank accounts, that drives our democracy

If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.

The government of man should be the monarchy of reason: it is too often the democracy of passions or the anarchy of humors.

Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics.

Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.

Full democracy requires the full participation of women. Your voices are vital. The word 'vital' means necessary for life. A democracy, to be fully alive, must include all its citizens.

Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual.

What can the schools do to defend democracy? Should they preach a specific political doctrine? I believe they should not. If they are able to teach young people to have a critical mind and a socially oriented attitude, they will have done all that is necessary.

Crime is contagious....if the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law.

Crime is fast destroying the moral fabric of South African cities, and is becoming a major threat to South African democracy as well as the prominent manifestation of a "class war" that is largely a continuation of the "race war" of yesterday.

In our democracy every young person should have an equal opportunity to obtain a higher education, regardless of his station in life or financial means.