Democracies Have Quotes - Page 9

• Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power.

  Uta Hagen

  Women, Moving, Taken

  Uta Hagen (1991). “Challenge For The Actor”, p.3, Simon and Schuster

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• Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

  Hans-Hermann Hoppe

  Freedom, Taken, Ideas

  "Reflections on State and War". Talk in Auburn, Alabama, on the occasion of receiving the Mises Institute’s 2006 Gary G. Schlarbaum Liberty Prize, www.lewrockwell.com. December 02, 2006.

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• One could always do more, faster and cleverer, but democracy has its own rhythm.

  Lech Walesa

  Democracy, Faster, Rhythm

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• Everyone living under the social contract we call democracy has a duty to act responsibly, to obey the laws, and to abandon certain types of self-interested behaviors that conflict with the general good.

  Simon Mainwaring

  Self, Law, Democracy

  "What #OccupyWallStreet Must Ask of Corporations and Themselves" by Simon Mainwaring, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 12, 2011.

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• With the end of the cold war, all the 'isms' of the 20th century - Fascism, Nazism, Communism and the evil of apartheid-ism - have failed. Except one. Only democracy has shown itself true the help of all mankind.

  Jack Kemp

  War, Evil, Democracy

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• Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.

  Joseph Sobran

  Believe, Libertarian Party, People

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• Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.

  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

  Fall, Two, Justice

  "Iran Leader Says Western-Style Democracy Has Failed". abcnews.go.com. May 9, 2006.

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• That's what American democracy has come down to at these town hall meetings: old people and gun nuts, which is a terrible combination. I heard somebody yell 'AK-47!' and a lady yelled, 'Bingo!'

  Bill Maher

  Gun, Ak 47, Nuts

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• Before we get too depressed about the state of our politics, let's remember our history ..... Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. What is amazing, is that despite all the conflict, our experiment in democracy has worked better than any form of government on earth

  Barack Obama

  Witty, Government, Political

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• A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

  James Madison

  Party, Passion, Sacrifice

  "Federalist No. 10 (The Federalist Papers)". Essay by James Madison, November 23, 1787.

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• Though editorialists at The New York Times and The Washington Post still don't get it, most Democrats in Congress finally do: Today's trade disputes are no longer mostly about tariffs, quotas, or free entry of goods. They are about the ground rules for capitalism. Are there to be only property rights? What about the other rights that liberal democracies have fought for since the 1880s?

  Robert Kuttner

  New York, Rights, Democracy

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• A spurious democracy has influenced both our research methods (I am sometimes tempted to define "validity" as part of the context of an experiment demanding so little in the way of esoteric gift that any number can play at it, provided they have taken a certain number of courses) and our research subjects (it would be deemed snobbish to investigate only the best people).

  David Riesman

  Taken, Play, Numbers

  David Riesman (1955). “Selected essays from Individualism reconsidered”

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• Our democracy has been around far longer than European democracy.

  Hillary Clinton

  Democracy, Has Beens

  "Standing O's greet Clinton in Brussels" by David S. Cloud, www.politico.com. March 6, 2009.

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• Although Israel was founded based on the historic Jewish homeland and the need to have a Jewish homeland, Israeli democracy has been premised on everybody in the country being treated equally and fairly. And I think that that is what's best about Israeli democracy.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Thinking, Israel

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• The hegemony of finance and the banks has produced the indebted. Control over information and communication networks has created the mediatized. The security regime and the generalized state of exception have constructed a figure prey to fear and yearning for protection—the securitized. And the corruption of democracy has forged a strange, depoliticized figure, the represented. These subjective figures constitute the social terrain on which—and against which—movements of resistance and rebellion must act.

  Michael Hardt

  Communication, Democracy, Hegemony

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• A total work of art is only possible in the context of the whole of society. Everyone will be a necessary co-creator of a social architecture, and, so long as anyone cannot participate, the ideal form of democracy has not been reached. Whether people are artists, assemblers of machines or nurses, it is a matter of participating in the whole.

  Joseph Beuys

  Art, Nurse, Long

  1972 From an interview with G Jappe (translated by J Wheelwright), in Studio International, vol.184, no.950, Dec. Quoted in C Harrison and P Wood (eds) Art in Theory 1900-1990 (1992).

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• When free discussion is denied, hardening of the arteries of democracy has set in, free institutions are but a lifeless form, and the death of the republic is at hand.

  William Randolph Hearst

  Hands, Democracy, Republic

  "In the News", June 13, 1941.

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• Lincoln, they used to talk about him almost as bad as they talk about me. So democracy has never been for the faint of heart.

  Barack Obama

  Heart, Democracy, Used

  Remarks by the President in a Town Hall Meeting in Decorah, Iowa, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. August 15, 2011.

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• The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain.

  Fiona Shaw

  Rights, Democracy, Gone

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.

  Llewellyn Rockwell

  Majority Rule, Democracy, Groups

  "Why Hate Monarchs?". mises.org. August 2001.

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• Taiwan's democracy has grown very fast and we enjoy a certain degree of freedom, as other developed democracies like the United States.

  Annette Lu

  Democracy, United States, Degrees

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• To declare the Cold War over, and declare democracy has won out over totalitarianism, is a measure of arrogance and wrong-headedness.

  Alexander Haig

  War, Arrogance, Democracy

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• Although Christianity has never been the guarantee of a democratic state anywhere in the world, no democracy has ever thrived successfully for any period of time outside of Christian influence.

  Theodore White

  Christian, Democracy, Guarantees

  Theodore H. White (1961). “The Making of the President 1960”

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• And I don't see that popular measures, self-abnegation and democracy have done anything for Man but push him further into the mud. Currently, popularity endorses degraded novels, self-abnegation has filled the Southeast Asian jungles with stone idols and corpses, and democracy has given us inflation and income tax.

  L. Ron Hubbard

  Men, Self, Idols

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• One faith, one law and one standard of justice did not mean democracy. The heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state . . . Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.

  R.J. Rushdoony

  Mean, Law, Justice

  "The Institutes of Biblical Law" by R.J. Rushdoony, (p. 100), 1973.

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