Explore Quotes on Democracy

I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.

The library is central to our free society. It is a critical element in the free exchange of information at the heart of our democracy.

In our democratic society, the library stands for hope, for learning, for progress, for literacy, for self-improvement and for civic engagement. The library is a symbol of opportunity, citizenship, equality, freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and hence, is a symbol for democracy itself.

Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.

Israel was born under the British mandate. We learned from the British what democracy means, and how it behaves in a time of danger, war and terror. We thank Britain for introducing freedom and respect of human rights both in normal and demanding circumstances.

You know who is against democracy in the Middle East? The husbands. They got used to their way of life. Now, the traditional way of life must change. Everybody must change. If you don't give equal rights to women, you can't progress.

Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.

Let's win the peace and democracy the good people of Iraq so richly deserve after decades of tyranny.

Unequal Democracy is the sort of book to which every political scientist should aspire--it is methodologically rigorous, conceptually serious, and above all, it addresses urgent concerns of our fellow citizens. As Bartels shows, much of what we think we know about the politics of economic inequality is dead wrong. Bartels's perplexing and often unexpected discoveries should help refocus the gathering public debate about inequality and what to do about it.

Immigration is everyone’s business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate.

Democracy is the worst form of government. It is the most inefficient, the most clumsy, the most unpractical.... It reduces wisdom to impotence and secures the triumph of folly, ignorance, clap-trap, and demagogy.... Yet democracy is the only form of social order that is admissible, because it is the only one consistent with justice.

The Internet is democracy's revenge on democracy.

In a Democracy, the real rulers are the dexterous manipulators of votes, with their placemen, the mechanics who so skillfully operate the hidden springs which move the puppets in the arena of democratic elections. Men of this kind are ever ready with loud speeches lauding equality; in reality, they rule the people as any despot or military dictator might rule it.

Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.

When the rate of return on capital exceeds the rate of growth of output and income, as it did in the nineteenth century and seems quite likely to do again in the twenty-first, capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based.

Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials.

Remember, the Islamist view of democracy is: one man, one vote, one election, and that's it.

I think the only way we retain credibility with the Arab world is to say, 'When push came to shove, despite the mistakes we made in the past, we are with you in democracy.'

Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up; they should have the chance to live in one today.

Now undoubtedly, we face some very British challenges when it comes to infrastructure. We rightly cherish our back yards and green spaces, and we'll defend them passionately when projects are announced. We live in a democracy, and we like to debate these things, often for many years.