Democracy Quotes - Page 39

• We're learning lessons from Africa. And the lesson that we need to learn is, how do we straighten our backs up in the face of these oligarchs and plutocrats who are trying to snatch the best of our democracy away?

  Cornel West

  Trying, Needs, Lessons

  FaceBook post by Dr. Cornel West from Feb 22, 2011

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• We are a democracy and we don't believe in just hunting down gangsters and killing them. We believe in trying to find the gangsters and bring them back for trial, and give them a trial under rule of law. That's what democracies do.

  Cornel West

  Believe, Hunting, Law

  6 Copy quote

• I believe democracy requires a 'sacred contract' between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works.

  Bill Moyers

  Trust, Believe, Media

  9 Copy quote

• Let's not give the electoral process so much importance. We have to be cynical about it. Let's give importance to the real democracy that's constructed on a day-to-day basis. That's my hopeful perspective on it.

  Gael Garcia Bernal

  Real, Giving, Perspective

  4 Copy quote

• Unlike national markets, which tend to be supported by domestic regulatory and political institutions, global markets are only 'weakly embedded'. There is no global lender of last resort, no global safety net, and of course, no global democracy. In other words, global markets suffer from weak governance, and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy.

  Dani Rodrik

  Safety, Political, Suffering

  Dani Rodrik (2012). “The Globalization Paradox: Why Global Markets, States, and Democracy Can't Coexist”, p.13, OUP Oxford

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If George Bush [Jr.] decided he was going to turn the troops loose on Syria and Iran after that he would last in office for about 15 minutes. In fact if President Bush were to try that now even I would think that he ought to be impeached. You can't get away with that sort of thing in this democracy.

  Lawrence Eagleburger

  Thinking, Iran, Office

  4 Copy quote

• In a modern democracy, not only can a libertarian be elitist; a libertarian has to be elitist. To be a libertarian in a modern democracy is to say that nearly 300 million Americans are wrong, and a handful of nay-sayers are right.

  Bryan Caplan

  Libertarian, Modern, Elitist

  "The Mirage of Libertarian Populism". econlog.econlib.org. November 12, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The minority must have involvement in society. You can have different cultural practices that you accept. But if you are going to adopt democracy in government, then the government itself must allow the minority to be heard.

  Sheila Jackson Lee

  Government, Practice, Different

  Interview with Rami Eljundi, World Internet News, April 26, 2006.

  53 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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, Democracies Have, Self

  4 Copy quote

• No one can define or measure justice, democracy, security, freedom, truth, or love. No one can define or measure any value. But if no one speaks up for them, if systems aren’t designed to produce them, if we don’t speak about them and point toward their presence or absence, they will cease to exist.

  Donella Meadows

  Justice, Speak, Absence

  Donella Meadows (2008). “Thinking in Systems: A Primer”, p.177, Chelsea Green Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The long fight to save wild beauty represents democracy at its best. It requires citizens to practice the hardest of virtues--self-restraint. Why cannot I take as many trout as I want from a stream? Why cannot I bring home from the woods a rare wildflower? Because if I do, everybody in this democracy should be able to do the same. My act will be multiplied endlessly. To provide protection for wildlife and wild beauty, everyone has to deny himself proportionately. Special privilege and conservation are ever at odds.

  Edwin Way Teale

  Home, Fighting, Odds

  Edwin Way Teale (1987). “Circle of the seasons: the journal of a naturalist's year”, Olympic Marketing Corp

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

  Arthur Jensen

  America, World, Unions

  13 Copy quote

• Fascism rewarded jackasses in uniform. Democracy gives privileges to those in sports' gear. In Italy, political regimes come to pass. Jackasses remain. Triumphant.

  Indro Montanelli

  Sports, Giving, Political

  "Controcorrente 1974-1986". Book by Indro Montanelli, 1987.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• If believers feel that their faith is trivialized and their true selves compromised by a society that will not give religious imperatives special weight, their problem is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist.

  Ellen Willis

  Religious, Self, Giving

  "Freedom from Religion". The Nation, February 19, 2001.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up

  Fred Thompson

  Friends, World, Lines

  17 Copy quote

• Senegal needs to free itself, to rediscover its democracy.

  Youssou N'Dour

  Needs

  "Youssou N'Dour interview: 'Senegal is turning into a dictatorship'". Interview with Harriet Alexander, www.telegraph.co.uk. February 19, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We praise the strength, the patience and the longing of the people who did not stop thinking of freedom and democracy in these dark times

  Joachim Gauck

  Dark, Thinking, People

  10 Copy quote

• Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy -- and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks.

  Shashi Tharoor

  Together, Bricks, Window

  Speech at the UN's World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2001.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why is it that aggression in the name of God shocks secular liberal sensibilities, whereas the act of killing in the name of the secular nation, or of democracy, does not?

  Talal Asad

  Names, Doe, Killing

  Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Saba Mahmood (2013). “Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech”, p.10

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let’s not forget that American democracy started with ‘We the People’ agreeing to work hard to create ‘a more perfect union.’ We’ve lost the idea that politics begins at home with what happens in families, in neighborhoods, in classrooms, in congregations. We called this democracy into being – and if we want to call this democracy back to its highest values, it’s got to be the us doing that calling. That’s not going to happen if ‘We the People’ don’t know how to talk to one another with civility and hold our differences in a creative, life-giving way.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Hard Work, Home, Ideas

  101 Copy quote

• Im a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

  Carl Icahn

  Boards, Cynic, Corporate

  4 Copy quote

• This is the first great problem of modern democracy...how to get a fair living by reasonable hours of work leaving enough leisure for both childhood and manhood.

  John R. Commons

  Work, Childhood, Leaving

  10 Copy quote

• Increase in the wealth per capita fosters democracy; but the latter, at least according to what we have been able to observe up to now, entails great destruction of wealth and even eventually dries up the sources of it. Hence it is its own grave-digger, it destroys what gave it birth.

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Able, Birth, Wealth

  Vilfredo Pareto (1971). “Manual of political economy”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• The diverse natures of men, combined with the necessity to satisfy in some manner the sentiment which desires them to be equal, has had the result that in the democracies they have endeavored to provide the appearance of power in the people and the reality of power in an elite.

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Reality, Men, People

  Vilfredo Pareto (1971). “Manual of political economy”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• My generation has not seen one single day of peace, and my dream is for my children and the children of all Colombians to have the change to see it. I hope the guerrilla understands that the time has come to leave this 50-year confrontation behind; that the time has come to change from bullets to votes, from weapons to argumentations; that the time has come for them to continue their struggle, but within democracy.

  Juan Manuel Santos

  Dream, Children, Struggle

  41 Copy quote