Quotes on Democracy

Democracy and violence can ill go together.

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.

There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations.

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.

In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.

Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.

It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.

Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them.

Life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect.

The well being of democracies regardless of their type and status is dependent on one small technical detail: The right to vote. Everything else is secondary.

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.

Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.

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

Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?

To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain.

I'm not the only one working for democracy in Burma - there are so many people who have worked for it because they believe that this is the only way we can maintain the dignity of our people.

Democracy is when the people keep a government in check.

Sometimes I think that a parody of democracy could be more dangerous than a blatant dictatorship, because that gives people an opportunity to avoid doing anything about it.

We cannot be both the world's leading champion of peace and the world's leading supplier of the weapons of war.