Democracy Quotes - Page 18

• Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been

  Winston Churchill

  Wise, Time, Freedom

  Speech in House of Commons, 11 Nov. 1947

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

  Edmund Burke

  Freedom, Law, House

  'A Tract on the Popery Laws' (planned c.1765) ch. 3, pt. 1 in 'The Works' vol. 5 (1812)

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• And in a democracy, when we say we're mad at what's going on, what we need to be saying is we're mad at ourselves.

  Mike Lowry

  Mad, Needs

  7 Copy quote

• Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.

  Walter Lippmann

  Suicide, Rights, Names

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.59, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Leader, Faults, Virtue

  "Stranger in a Strange Land". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, p. 232, 1991.

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Government, People, Aristocracy

  207 Copy quote

• There's something magical that happens when people eat from the same pot. The family meal is really the nursery of democracy. It's where we learn to share; it's where we learn to argue without offending. It's just too critical to let go, as we've been so blithely doing.

  Michael Pollan

  Letting Go, Offending, People

  "Fire, Water, Air, Earth: Michael Pollan Gets Elemental In 'Cooked'". "Weekend Edition Sunday" with Rachel Martin, www.npr.org. April 21, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A free press is one of the pillars of democracy.

  Nelson Mandela

  Pillars, Free Press, Presses

  Nelson Mandela (1998). “In the Words of Nelson Mandela”, Birch Lane Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it.
  “Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking
  great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Taken, Heart, Views

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1990). “Democracy in America”

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy

  Karl Marx

  Reason, States, Form

  Karl Marx, Joseph O'Malley (1977). “Critique of Hegel's 'Philosophy Of Right'”, p.31, CUP Archive

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects... a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion.

  Adolf Hitler

  Majority Rule, Organization, People

  25 Copy quote

• By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature.

  Adolf Hitler

  Majority Rule, Numbers, Principles

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have said democracy and freedom do not work too well if you are hungry, if you are starving.

  Pete Domenici

  Hungry, Said, Starving

  9 Copy quote

• The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.

  Kate Adie

  Silence, Information, Literature

  7 Copy quote

• Organized religion, wielding power over the community, is antithetical to the process of what modern democracy should define as liberty. The sooner we are without it, the better.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Community, Liberty, Wielding Power

  "Does Religious Liberty Equal Freedom to Discriminate?" by Lawrence M. Krauss, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 29, 2012.

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

  Edmund Burke

  Wisdom, Freedom, Giving Up

  Speech at County Meeting of Buckinghamshire, 1784

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

  Oscar Wilde

  Funny, Sarcastic, Freedom

  'The Soul of Man under Socialism'

  131 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.

  Jacque Fresco

  Freedom, Acceptance, Games

  225 Copy quote
• 

  The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.

  Theodore White

  Freedom, Nerd, Politics Today

  49 Copy quote

• Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Government

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.413, Harvard University Press

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think what democracy means today, in reality, is to a large extent, manipulated consent - not forced consent, manipulated consent - and manipulated more and more with the help of Madison Avenue.

  Erich Fromm

  Mean, Thinking, Reality

  Source: www.hrc.utexas.edu

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.

  Peter Thiel

  Believe, Compatible

  "The only living Trump supporter in Silicon Valley" by John Naughton, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2016.

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy is not a static thing. It is an everlasting march.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  March, Static, Everlasting

  Roosevelt, Franklin D. (1938). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: F.D. Roosevelt, 1935, Volume 4”, p.403, Best Books on

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The continuation of authority has frequently proved the undoing of democratic governments. Repeated elections are essential to the system of popular governments, because there is nothing so dangerous as to suffer power to be vested for a long time in one citizen. The people become accustomed to obeying him, and he becomes accustomed to commanding, hence the origin of usurpation and tyranny.

  Simon Bolivar

  Government, Long, People

  "The World's Great Speeches". Book edited by Lewis Copeland and Lawrence Lamm, 1958.

  316 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis.

  Saul Alinsky

  Dream, Lying, Believe

  19 Copy quote