Liberal Democracy Quotes

• As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality.

  George Washington

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Patriotic

  George Washington (1837). “The writings of George Washington: being his correspondence, addresses, messages, and other papers, official and private, selected and published from the original manuscripts; with a life of the author, notes, and illustrations”, p.178

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  Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Patriotic, Equality, Differences

  "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail". Oeuvres complètes, Volume IX, p. 546, 1866.

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• Democracy is four wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Gun, Lunch, Democracies Have

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• Two significant developments in the past several decades have been the collapse of communism as an ideology and the general acceptance, in rhetoric, if not practice, of liberal democracy.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Acceptance, Past, Practice

  Interview With Amina Chaudary, www.theislamicmonthly.com. June 17, 2012.

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• What modernity requires is not that you cease living according to your faith, but that you accept that others may differ and that therefore politics requires a form of discourse that is reasonable and accessible to believer and non-believer alike. This religious restraint in politics is critical to the maintenance of liberal democracy.

  Andrew Sullivan

  Religious, Democracy, May

  "Of Modern Faith". "The Daily Dish", December 14, 2008.

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• The great ideas of the West - rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy- quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization- - remain the best, and perhaps the only, means for all people, no matter of what race or creed, to reach their full potential and live in freedom.

  Ibn Warraq

  Mean, Race, Self

  Ibn Warraq (2010). “Virgins? What Virgins?: And Other Essays”

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• Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline.

  Robert O. Paxton

  Order, Community, Political

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• Fascism and communism have not entirely disappeared but have been sidelined certainly, and liberal democracy has come to be accepted, in theory at least, around the world, if not always in practice.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Democracies Have, Practice, Democracy

  Interview With Amina Chaudary, www.theislamicmonthly.com. June 17, 2012.

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• What we have to do is to definitively remove the last vestiges of power from those who treat terms such as liberal democracy, free markets and Europe with suspicion.

  Donald Tusk

  Europe, Democracy, Lasts

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• Liberal democracy must finally become the vital element of our society.

  Gustav Heinemann

  Democracy, Elements, Our Society

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• How do we preserve our civil rights, our traditions as a liberal democracy, in a time when government power is expanding and is more and more difficult to check?

  Edward Snowden

  Rights, Government, Democracy

  Source: www.thenation.com

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• If every inhabitant of a liberal democracy believes in liberal democracy, then it doesn't matter what creed or colour they are.

  Martin Amis

  Believe, Democracy, Matter

  "No, I am not a racist" by Martin Amis, www.theguardian.com. December 01, 2007.

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• I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations, in examples of justice and liberality.

  George Washington

  4th Of July, America, Justice

  "Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious".

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• The most widely discussed formulation of [the One World model] was the "end of history" thesis advanced by Francis Fukuyama. "We may be witnessing," Fukuyama argued, "the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." The future will be devoted not to great exhilarating struggles over ideas but rather to resolving mundane economic and technical problems. And, he concluded rather sadly, it will all be rather boring.

  Samuel P. Huntington

  Struggle, Government, Ideas

  "The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order". Book by Samuel P. Huntington. Chapter 1: "The New Era in World Politics," § 3: "Other Worlds?," p. 31, 1996.

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• Liberal democracy - as you know, in the old days, we were saying we want socialism with a human face. Today's left effectively offers global capitalism with a human face, more tolerance, more rights and so on. So the question is, is this enough or not? Here I remain a Marxist: I think not.

  Slavoj Žižek

  Thinking, Rights, Tolerance

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• 'Solutionism' for me is, above all, an unthinking pursuit of perfection - by means of technology - without coming to grips with the fact that imperfection is an essential feature of liberal democracy.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Mean, Technology, Perfection

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• The only right we do not and should not have in a liberal democracy is a right not to be offended.

  Flemming Rose

  Democracy, Should, Offended

  "We Must All Be Charlie Hebdo Today" by Flemming Rose, www.politico.com. December 23, 2014.

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• If you had said to anyone in 1945, at the end of the Second World War with the continent it ruins, that you could have a European Union of 28 member states stretching from Portugal in the West to Estonia in the East, all of them more-or-less liberal democracies - they wouldn't have believed you.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  War, Democracy, East

  "Tracing The 43-Year History Of The U.K. In The European Union". "All Things Considered" with Ray Suarez, www.npr.org. June 25, 2016.

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• Only together do Europe and the U.S. stand a chance of keeping liberal democracy as the central doctrine for organizing world affairs.

  Victor Ponta

  Europe, Democracy, Together

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• Islam is not a race...Islam is simply a set of beliefs, and it is not 'Islamophobic' to say Islam is incompatible with liberal democracy.

  Ayaan Hirsi Ali

  Race, Islam, Democracy

  CBC News Interview, July 11, 2007.

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• Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Believe, Law, Democracy

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• In Europe, where the terrorist threat is probably greatest at the moment, the amount of information-sharing that's been taking place, the effectiveness of law enforcement across borders gives us the ability to protect ourselves while still being true to the basic precepts of our liberal democracies. I hope that that continues, and it is something that I think we should be worried about.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, Europe, Law

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• No one can know how long this dumbing-down of American religion will persist. But so long as it does, citizens should probably be more vigilant about policing the public square, not less so. . . . [Y]ou cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among religious believers. That remains true today, both in Baghdad and in Baton Rouge.

  Mark Lilla

  Religious, Squares, Long

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• iPod liberalism [is] where we assume that every single Iranian or Chinese who happens to have and love his iPod will also love liberal democracy.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Technology, Ipods, Chinese

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• I call government that works the best for people open society, which is basically just another more general term for a democracy that is - you call it maybe a liberal democracy. It's not only majority rule but also respect for minorities and minority opinions and the rule of law. So it's really a sort of institutional democracy.

  George Soros

  Government, Law, Majority Rule

  Source: www.pbs.org

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