Democracy Quotes - Page 3

Americans talked about voters the same way Russians talked about Stalin. They had to be obeyed.

Every time I do an interview people ask similar questions, such as "What is the most significant story that you have revealed?" […] There really is only one overarching point that all of these stories have revealed, and that is–and I say this without the slightest bit of hyperbole or melodrama; it's not metaphorical and it's not figurative; it is literally true–that the goal of the NSA and it's five eyes partners in the English speaking world–Canada, New Zealand, Australia and especially the UK–is to eliminate privacy globally, to ensure that there could be no human communications that occur electronically, that evades their surveillance net; they want to make sure that all forms of human communications by telephone or by Internet, and all online activities are collected, monitored, stored and analyzed by that agency and by their allies.That means, to describe that is to describe a ubiquitous surveillance state; you don't need hyperbole to make that claim, and you do not need to believe me when I say that that's their goal. Document after document within the archive that Edward Snowden provided us declare that to be their goal. They are obsessed with searching out any small little premise of the planet where some form of communications might take place without they being able to invade it.

Glenn Greenwald

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness, and should insist upon choosing as their representatives only such persons as are good and true.

Mahatma Gandhi

The US exports democracy, hence there being very little left for Americans

Dean Cavanagh

As life speeds up & the political becomes ever more personal democracy continues to foster change as fast as the movement of tectonic plates

Dean Cavanagh

Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Prosperity and democracy does seem to be a good way to wean a population off massive alcohol abuse.

Oliver Bullough

In 1870, came the victory of the short-service troops of Prussia over the long-service troops of France, where conscription had but recently been reintroduced in a partial form and as a supplementary measure. That obvious contrast carried more weight into the world than all the other factors which tilted the scales against France. As a result, universal peace-time conscription was adopted by almost all countries as the basis of their military system. This ensured that wars would grow bigger in scale, longer in duration, and worse in effects. While conscription appeared democratic, it provided autocrats, hereditary or revolutionary, with more effective and comprehensive means of imposing their will, both in peace and war. Once the rulp of compulsory service in arms was established for the young men of a nation, it was an obvious and easy transition to the servitude of the whole population. Totalitarian tyranny is the twin of total warfare—which might aptly be termed a reversion to tribal warfare on a larger scale.

B.H. Liddell Hart

It's an election year. We would prefer that voters didn't use common sense.

Aaron Sorkin

For the minority, what else is democracy than dictatorship?

Anna Jae

The absolute value of being neutral is zero.

Toba Beta

Democracy is not a good by itself. It is completely dependent upon the nature of the people, both for its efficacy and for its survival. One can say that a “democratic” people, if placed under a dictatorship, would be more “democratically” ruled than a “dictatorship” people placed under a democracy and one can expect that both would very soon revert to the system that suited them. The system works for us, and it works extremely well, but to think that therefore a government should be judged by the measure of its “democracy” is sheer nonsense.

G.M. Mes

In almost every detail, when one examines it closely, it is not Democracy which makes the system work, but the Individual democrats who, in it, use their powers correctly and in the way that they were intended to be used. If those in power were not essentially democrats, the whole situation would collapse. Its strength is not in itself, but in its members. Any “say” that the citizen has in ruling himself is due to the goodwill and the honesty of those to whom he has entrusted the power to rule him.

G.M. Mes

When bad news sells, money politics buys.

Toba Beta

It looks as if British democracy died a few years ago, and nobody noticed.

Steve Merrick

The health of democracy, not its hate, is its best propaganda.

Judith C. Waller

Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.

Benito Mussolini

I am a patriot. I have always sought to serve my country, in theory a Republic. Learning that secrecy was evil rather than good was my first step. From there it was a steady march toward open-source everything. Now I see all the evil that secrecy enables in a corrupt Congress, a corrupt Executive, a corrupt economy, and a corrupt society. I see that the greatest service I or any other person can render to the Republic is to march firmly, non-violently, toward open-source everything.

Robert David Steele

In order for us to live within this finely balanced constellation of complex systems, in order for the Earth to show resilience and last for centuries into the future as an environment of human life, we have to embody three things: a respect for Earth systems and their details in balance; a commitment to discovering and sharing the truth and only the truth at all times about all things; and a commitment to doing no harm.

Robert David Steele

Our concept of truth becomes more universal as we reach higher levels of consciousness and awareness, taking in a wider spectrum of information and possibility. As we adapt a more expanded perspective on our reality, our concept of what is true and meaningful changes--from local to regional, regional to global, beyond global to the galaxy, and then to the cosmos.

Robert David Steele

When we relate and share knowledge authentically, this places us in a state of grace, a state of 'win-win' harmony with all others, and establishes trust among all.

Robert David Steele

Put in the bluntest possible terms, what I discovered was that the U.S. secret intelligence community was collecting only information it considered secret, while ignoring the eighty to ninety percent of the information in the world, in all languages, that was not secret.

Robert David Steele

The bottom line is that our government is not intelligent about how it pursues the public interest, because its decisions are not informed decisions (and its interest is generally not the public's).

Robert David Steele

I am personally optimistic. I share the widespread view that we are entering a new epoch during which we can achieve conscious evolution and the elevation of humanity to a constructive steward of the Earth.

Robert David Steele

There is nothing wrong with the United States--or the world at large--that cannot be stabilized and reconstructed by restoring the intelligence and integrity of all our organizations across the eight communities (academic, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-governmental/non-profit).

Robert David Steele

Integrity, in my view, starts with the individual human being and grows in a compounded manner from there. The citizen must be an 'intelligence minuteman.

Robert David Steele

Complexity demands resilience, and that's what panarchy offers. Resilience in the face of complexity is a challenge even when you apply rigorous intelligence and integrity to develop a coherent and flexible strategy.

Robert David Steele

The foremost, or indeed the sole condition, which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus, the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced, as it were, to a single principle.

Alexis de Tocqueville

New Englanders began the Revolution not to institute reforms and changes in the order of things, but to save the institutions and customs that already had become old and venerable with them; and were new only to a few stupid Englishmen a hundred and fifty years behind the times.

Edward Pearson Pressey

Now, these eager and apprehensive men of small property constitute the class which is constantly increased by the equality of conditions. Hence, in democratic communities, the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one.

Alexis de Tocqueville

People keep saying someone should fix the system, the system is corrupt. What they don’t get is; they are the system. It’s just like how people hate McDonald’s and Coca Cola. People say they are evil corporations, terrorists and ruining the health of the future but then, how are these brands live and running all over the world, making billions of dollars of profit every day? People still buy it, that’s how. The majority of the world is people who know something is bad for them but keep consuming it. If it’s so bad for you, why buy it? If the system is so bad, why do they vote for it? It’s the people who need to change not the leaders.

Thisuri Wanniarachchi

We may still contrive to raise three cheers for democracy, although at present she only deserves two.

E.M. Forster

What makes the Arabs suitable candidates for democracy is their heritage as human beings, not their specific cultural or historical antecedents.

Gwynne Dyer

In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.

Alexis de Tocqueville

The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness.

Alexis de Tocqueville

i believe in the freedom of state where every people have to right develop their culture and maintain the democracy while two things are very essential justice and equality - Long Live Pakistan and Happy Independence Day

Avinash Advani

Internal democracy in schools is as important in order to ensure the true democratization of education.

Sharad Vivek Sagar

Globally, democracies have also acted in ways that suggest an outright renunciation of their principles at home.

Nayef Al-Rodhan

The sheriff listened uneasily to a sound, very uncommon at elections, of the populace expressing an opinion contrary to that of the lord of the soil.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

We have been gradually finding out that there is more democracy in letting a committee or representative ten to details than in making everybody's business nobody's business.

Edward Pearson Pressey

Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.

John Locke

The more I see of the representatives of the people, the more I admire my dogs.

Alphonse de Lamartine

[A]s long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if meaningful.

Noam Chomsky

In 1951 Dec 20th, Nehru, while campaigning for the first democratic elections in India, took a short break to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. Although he believed democracy was the best form of governance, while speaking at the symposium he wondered loud... the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda....He[the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either a dictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.-Quoted from India After Gandhi, page 157.

Ramachandra Guha

The real triumph of the state occurs when its subjects refer to it as “we,” like football fans talking about the home team.

Joseph Sobran

International politics is never about democracy and human rights. It's about the interests of states. Remember that, no matter what you are told in history lessons.

Egon Bahr

Usury is the cancer of the world, which only the surgeon's knife of fascism can cut out of the life of the nations.

Ezra Pound

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Abraham Lincoln

DAD (Decide-Announce-Defend) remains the order of the day, with only a few inspiring models of EDD (Engage-Deliberate-Decide) available to us to demonstrate how very different things could be.

Johnathon Porritt

Democracy will be a reality when people will be rightly heard and valued. When in all policy making, in all big or small works, when state and government institutions will be accountable to people by keeping people in focus all the time who represented their power and empowered them. Democracy will be a reality when people will be valued more than flags, constitution, nationalism, patriotism and other symbolism.

William Gomes

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

Walter Cronkite

The right of dissent, or, if you prefer, the right to be wrong, is surely fundamental to the existence of a democratic society. That’s the right that went first in every nation that stumbled down the trail toward totalitarianism.

Edward R. Murrow

The "democratization of education" is everyone's fight, everyone's right.

Sharad Vivek Sagar

One has to understand that equality ends up by infiltrating the world of politics as it does everywhere else. It would be impossible to imagine men forever unequal in one respect, yet equal in others; they must, in the end, come to be equal in all.Now, I am aware of only two means of establishing equality in the world of politics: rights have to be granted to every citizen or to none.

Alexis de Tocqueville

... you can't start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relived when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.

John Steinbeck

Democracy requires citizens to see things from one another's point of view, but instead were more and more enclosed in our own bubbles. Democracy requires a reliance on shared facts; instead were being offered parallel but separate universes.

Eli Pariser

Democracy, religion, education and terrorism have all become practicable norms all over the world – thanks to globalization

Tony Osborg

The very principle of democracy is founded on the possibility of making alternative choices. There is no longer a need for democracy, since ideology made the idea that "there is no alternative" acceptable. Adherence to a meta-social principle of superior rationality allows for the elimination of the necessity and possibility of choosing. The so-called principle of the rationality of "markets" exactly fills this function in the ideology of obsolescent capitalism. Democratic practice is thus emptied of all content in the way is open to what I have called "low-intensity democracy" - that is, to electoral buffooneries where parades of majorettes take the place of programs, to the society of the spectacle. Delegitimized by these practices, politics is undone, begins to drift and loses its potential power to give meaning and coherence to alternative societal projects.

Samir Amin

Rather than signalling the aspiration for system of checks and balances against absolute power, democracy become a euphemism for majority rule.

Peter Mansfield

This is why we apply the LCD Principle or Lowest Common Democracy. In short, this is social interaction based not on the best possible good, but on the least possible offense. Without saying so, the parties involved have entered into the following arrangement: What is the least we can all agree on and still get along? Of course, you can see this means no one is pleased.

Geoffrey Wood

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Democracy Quotes - Page 3

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