Democracy Quotes - Page 31

• We have a natural constant craving for leadership. Democracy is always a fragile and imperfect achievement. Yet a distinct feeling of malaise in our political culture lingers. There is something missing from our public debates.

  Tim Soutphommasane

  Leadership, Achievement, Political

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• I'm not so sure liberal democracy as we know it has reached its terminus. It's clear though, that many have genuinely lost confidence in the Australian political class. One reason is that we like to place enormous burdens of expectations on modern political leaders. To be sure such expectations aren't always honest. Just as we want better public services but object to paying the higher taxes that would make them possible, we often want leadership but only if there aren't hard choices with real consequences.

  Tim Soutphommasane

  Leadership, Real, Class

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• The politics of that year [2004] are old now, but the problem remains the same, the real culture clash of American life. It's between the essence of fundamentalism - paternalism, authority, and charity - and the messy imperatives of democracy, "the din of the vox populi" once derided by Abram Vereide. It's the difference between false unity, preached from above, and real solidarity, pledged between brothers and sisters - the kinds who are always bickering.

  Jeff Sharlet

  Brother, Real, Essence

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• Since an informed citizenry is the basis for a healthy democracy, independent, non-corporate media are more crucial today than ever before

  Dahr Jamail

  Independent, Media, Healthy

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• One reason the United States finds itself at the edge of a foreign policy disaster is its underinformed citizenry, a key weakness in democracy.

  Stefan Halper

  Peace, War, Keys

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• New possibilities for a more active democracy are beginning to emerge in the information age. Effective citizen action is possible if citizens develop the abilities to gain access to information of all kinds and the skills to put such information to effective use.

  Harry Boyte

  Skills, Age, Information

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• In effective, sustained citizen action, people learn the skills of public life with which to act effectively. "Commons," or the common wealth-the public goods that are objects of sustainable public action-become not only occasions for collaboration by invaluable sources of citizen education in their own right because they are the occasions for learning such skills.

  Harry Boyte

  Skills, People, Citizens

  Harry Chatten Boyte (1989). “CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics”

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• We don't need people who can spit back facts. We've got Google.

  Roberta Michnick Golinkoff

  People, Google, Needs

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• More often than not "fair" and "balanced" may be mutually exclusive

  Neal Gabler

  May, Balanced, Fairs

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• We do not know what is being done in our name. Worse, we do not ask.

  Ben Ehrenreich

  Names, Done, Knows

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• Globilization in its current form cannot deliver the benefits expected of it. Civil society, particularly in developing countries, must ensure that it does.

  Martin Khor

  Country, Expectations, Developing Countries

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• The proper response toward what we occasionally imagine to be democracy, methinks, is to retain one's self-respect by not participating in it.

  Fred Reed

  Self, Imagine, Response

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• Voting in particular is an embarrassment, being a public display of weak character and low intelligence. Let us face the truth: Democracy, like spitting in public or the Roman games, is the proper activity of the lower intellectual and moral classes. It amounts to collusion in one's own suckering.

  Fred Reed

  Character, Games, Class

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• Those who wash regularly should not stoop to democracy.

  Fred Reed

  Should, Stoops

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• Democracy is no solution - it's just 51% bossing the other 49% around. For God's sake, Hitler was democratically elected! Democracy is just mob rule dressed up in a coat and tie.

  Doug Casey

  Ties, Sake, Mob Rule

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• Good, law-abiding, value-oriented citizens are the ultimate in hypocrisy; "majority rules" and the law are exactly the same as being the biggest bully on the block with the biggest stick-it is only might that allows one group to force another to live by its code of conduct.

  William J. Murray

  Block, Law, Majority Rule

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• Democracy, or "majority rules," is another trick of our society to force us to do things we don't want to do. Even if we actually lived in a pure democracy (and the system we do live in is not even close), where everyone got a single vote on every subject, forcing the minority to obey the majority is no different to one man, if he had the power, forcing everyone else to do what he wanted them to-simply because he could.

  William J. Murray

  Men, Majority Rule, Want

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• Why is acquiescence to the numerous viewed as better servitude than bowing to might?

  William J. Murray

  Acquiescence, Might, Servitude

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• It is subversive to set up inquisitions like this, state or national, into the thoughts and consciences of Americans. . . . It is subversive for commissions like this to spread hysteria and intimidation throughout the land that Americans are afraid to sign petitions, afraid to read progressive magazines, afraid to make out checks for liberal causes, afraid to join organizations, afraid to speak their mind on public issues. Americans dare not be free citizens! This is the destruction of democracy.

  Florence Luscomb

  Women, Hysteria, Issues

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• Is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship?

  Plato

  Greed, Excess, Way

  Plato (1963). “The Republic”

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• And is it not true that in like manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unhallowed tongue and lips that have tasted kindred blood, banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands.

  Plato

  Blood, Hands, Land

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• And a democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices.

  Plato

  Party, Winning, Office

  Plato (1935). “The Republic”

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• A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!

  Plato

  Government, Kind, Form

  The Republic bk. 8, 558c

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• In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and secretive... Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men: the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen.

  Keith Bradsher

  Money, Powerful, Lying

  "INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS; Obscure Global Bank Moves Into the Light". www.nytimes.com. August 5, 1995.

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• Politics /n/: from 'poly ticks', short for 'many small bloodsucking insects'.

  Henry Spencer

  Political, Tick, Insects

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