Democracy Quotes - Page 6

Debate is never finished; it can't be, lest democracy be no longer democratic and society be stripped of or forfeit its autonomy. Democracy means that the citizen's task is never complete. Democracy exists through persevering and unyielding citizens' concern. Once that concern is put to sleep, democracy expires. And so there is no, and cannot be, a democracy, an autonomous society, without autonomous citizens - that is, citizens endowed with individual liberty and individual responsibility for the ways they use it. That liberty is another value - though unthinkable in separation from the value of democracy. Democracy rests on the freedom of its citizens, and citizens rest their confidence of being free and the courage to be free on the democracy of their polis. The two make each other and are made in the process of that making.

Zygmunt Bauman

Between the black box proprietary code, barebones computers we call voting machines and a mass of completely unqualified election officials, our election system is up for grabs to anybody with even a modest interest and some script kiddie capability. The cyber-kinetic attack surface here is wide open.

James Scott

The collaboration between secretaries of state, election officials and the voting system manufacturers on the matter of enforcing this black box proprietary code secrecy with election systems, is nothing less than the commoditization and monetization of American Democracy

James Scott

You think an Air Gap is a defense? Sofacy, Stuxnet, Uroburos, AirHopper, BitWhisperer and ProjectSauron…enough said!

James Scott

There are three kinds of constitution, and an equal number of deviation-forms--perversions, as it were, of them. The constitutions are monarchy, aristocracy, and thirdly that which is based on a property qualification, which it seems appropriate to call timocratic, though most people are wont to call it polity. The best of these is monarchy, the worst timocracy. The deviation from monarchy is tyranny; for both are forms of one-man rule, but there is the greatest difference between them; the tyrant looks to his own advantage, the king to that of his subjects. For a man is not a king unless he is sufficient to himself and excels his subjects in all good things; and such a man needs nothing further; therefore he will not look to his own interests but to those of his subjects; for a king who is not like that would be a mere titular king. Now tyranny is the very contrary of this; the tyrant pursues his own good. And it is clearer in the case of tyranny that it is the worst deviation-form; but it is the contrary of the best that is worst. Monarchy passes over into tyranny; for tyranny is the evil form of one-man rule and the bad king becomes a tyrant. Aristocracy passes over into oligarchy by the badness of the rulers, who distribute contrary to equity what belongs to the city-all or most of the good things to themselves, and office always to the same people, paying most regard to wealth; thus the rulers are few and are bad men instead of the most worthy. Timocracy passes over into democracy; for these are coterminous, since it is the ideal even of timocracy to be the rule of the majority, and all who have the property qualification count as equal. Democracy is the least bad of the deviations;

Aristotle

Somehow, people always forget that it's much easier to install a dictator than to remove one

Garry Kasparov

The Roman Empire, born out the Roman Republic, with its ideas of democracy among a certain group of wealthy men (no vote for men without land -as with our Founding Fathers- and certainly no vote for women and slaves. Why are democracies built on top of one form of slavery or another?)

Tina Packer

You’re a raptor who sees all his people as defenseless little flit-wrens—and you’ll save them, if only they give up the fanciful notion that they can lead themselves, that they can protect themselves.” “You understand nothing.” “Meanwhile,” Sinjir says, really leaning into it now, “your opponent is a woman who wants to give democracy to the entirety of the galaxy. Freedom for all. Oppression for none.” “It’s naïve.” “It may be. But at this point, I’m going to side with her precious naïveté over your authoritarian bluster.

Chuck Wendig

If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose.

Peter Singer

In an absolutism, the autocrat is visible and tangible. The real despotism of republican institutions is far deeper, more insidious, because it rests on the popular delusion of self-government and independence. That is the subtle source of democratic tyranny, and, as such, it cannot be reached with a bullet.

Alexander Berkman

Darwin and Nietzsche were the common spiritual and intellectual source for the mean-spirited and bellicose ideological assault on progress, liberalism, and democracy that fired the late-nineteenth-century campaign to preserve or rejuvenate the traditional order. Presensitized for this retreat from modernity, prominent fin-de-siècle aesthetes, engages literati, polemical publicists, academic sociologists, and last but not least, conservative and reactionary politicians became both consumers and disseminators of the untried action-ideas.Oscar Wilde and Stefan George were perhaps most representative of the aristocratizing aesthetes whose rush into dandyism or retreat into cultural monasticism was part of the outburst against bourgeois philistinism and social levelling. Their yearning for a return to an aristocratic past and their aversion to the invasive democracy of their day were shared by Thomas Mann and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, whose nostalgia for the presumably superior sensibilities of a bygone cultivated society was part of their claim to privileged social space and position in the present. Although they were all of burgher or bourgeois descent, they extolled ultra-patrician values and poses, thereby reflecting and advancing the rediscovery and reaffirmation of the merits and necessities of elitism. Theirs was not simply an aesthetic and unpolitical posture precisely because they knowingly contributed to the exaltation of societal hierarchy at a time when this exaltation was being used to do battle against both liberty and equality. At any rate, they may be said to have condoned this partisan attack by not explicitly distancing themselves from it.Maurice Barrès, Paul Bourget, and Gabriele D'Annunzio were not nearly so self-effacing. They were not only conspicuous and active militants of antidemocratic elitism, but they meant their literary works to convert the reader to their strident persuasion. Their polemical statements and their novels promoted the cult of the superior self and nation, in which the Church performed the holy sacraments. Barrès, Bourget, and D'Annunzio were purposeful practitioners of the irruptive politics of nostalgia that called for the restoration of enlightened absolutism, hierarchical society. and elite culture in the energizing fires of war.

Arno J. Mayer

Without a sharp turnaround toward democracy and equality in the United States, Europe will be virtually alone in its commitment to social democracy. The pressures of low-wage immigrant labor, cheap imports from Eastern Europe and Asia, and free-market practices of governments are already threatening once secure areas of employment and causing right-wing populism to pop up in various Western European countries. Surprising numbers of middle-class and working-class voters have supported ultranationalist, neofascist parties throughout Europe because, like white male workers in the United States, they see their status slipping.

Steve Brouwer

It was not, however, to these Fascist groups, numerically unimportant as they were, that the Third Republic owed its collapse. On the contrary, the plain, if paradoxical, truth is that their influence was never so slight as at the moment when the collapse actually took place. What made France fall was the fact that she had no more true Dreyfusards, no one who believed that democracy and freedom, equality and justice could any longer be defended or realized under the republic.

Hannah Arendt

Monarchy is like a splendid ship, with all sails set it moves majestically on, but then it hits a rock and sinks for ever. Democracy is like a raft. It never sinks but, damn it, your feet are always in the water. That is a good metaphor, for raft, he implies, is simply swept along by the tide or the current; one can with a paddle or a plank steer a little to stay afloat, trim forward direction slightly to left or right, perhaps even slow down or speed up a little, but there is no turning back against the current of democracy.

Bernard Crick

President George Washington’s namesake capital, once a marketplace for slave auctions, is now synonymous with democracy and freedom; so is the iconic Jefferson, who wanted to build an “Empire of Liberty” for the world.

Patrick Mendis

The biggest mistake of a democratic country is to underestimate the power of a democratically elected pro-fascist leader because it is always easier to destroy a castle from within!

Mehmet Murat ildan

If a nation is leaving democracy and choosing fascism, it means that it is taking itself from a peaceful garden to a bloody slaughter house!

Mehmet Murat ildan

The demand for equality has two sources; one of them is among the noblest, the other is the basest, of human emotions. The noble source is the desire for fair play. But the other source is the hatred of superiority. At the present moment it would be very unrealistic to overlook the importance of the latter.

C.S. Lewis

The author also participated in Operation Uphold Democracy (in Haiti, a year after the catastrophic denouement of Operation Restore Hope in Somalia). ... Hope was not restored in Somalia. Democracy was not upheld in Haiti.

Stan Goff

This is all very personal for me, but it's also collective, and the two are not disconnected. I have never believed that you only advocate for the things that you stand for and embody. I've always believed that our liberation, my liberation, is tied up with yours. To make a country that works for me, there's gotta be a country that works for you.

Pramila Jayapal

The reduced sense of responsibility and the absence of effective volition in turn explain the ordinary citizen's ignorance and lack of judgement in matters of domestic and foreign policy which are if anything more shocking in the case of educated people and of people who are successfully active in non-political walks of life than it is with uneducated people in humble stations.

Joseph Alois Schumpeter

Voters thereby prove themselves bad and indeed corrupt judges of such issues and often they even prove themselves bad judges of their own long-run interests, for it is only the short-run promise that tells politically and only short-run rationality that asserts itself effectively.

Joseph Alois Schumpeter

I’d watched the election of Barack Obama with them, in Harlem: the celebration had spilled out onto the streets and erupted into dancing, outdoor champagne-drinking, euphoria. This [the 1/21/17 Women's March on Washington, DC] was different. It was like laughter at a funeral—what else can you do but hold on to who you are and who you love? What can you do but try to stay sane and fight like hell for what life is all about?

Sarah Larson

After a democratic interlude the "monarchy" returns with a vengeance, returns by the back door, camouflaged, masked and diabolically perverted—a blood-curdling metamorphosis we know only from nightmares or surrealist films. The reassertion of the natural father-urge does not result in the restitution of the paternal kingdom but in the rise of the Terrifying Father, a Krónos devouring his own children, who are paralyzed by his magnetic glare like rabbits facing a boa constrictor.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

One cannot equate "capitalism" and "democracy.

Wilhelm Reich

How do the day’s event(s) compare with the famous quote you’ve picked to write about in So This Just Happened: The Journal for USA Current Events?Journal your thoughts on current events inside, in light of the 101 famous and thought-provoking quotes about the United States of America, democracy and more.Abnormal times call for first person accounts: witness current events compared to the United States of America’s values, laws, and principles. So This Just Happened: The Journal for USA Current Events includes 101 thought-provoking and insightful quotes by Founding Fathers’, famous historical figures, past Presidents and more for you to compare and contrast with current events.With a quote on every other lined journal page; you can write in order or flip to the most relevant quote for the day’s events to write about. Each lined page for you to write on has a spot to write the date at the top.

Samuel B. Jonathan

[Stephen] Harper had said he would use all legal means, and what [John] Baird suggested was an option the prome minister was considering. If the governor general had refused his request, he could have replaced her with a more compliant one, making the case to the Queen that the people of Canada were opposed in great numbers to a coalition replacing his government.

Lawrence Martin

If I were making a country, I'd get the sewage pipes first, then the democracy, then I'd go about giving pamphlets and statues of Gandhi to other people, but what do I know? I'm just a murderer!

Aravind Adiga

Being called a murderer: fine, I have no objection to that. It's a fact: I am a sinner, a fallen human. But to be called a murderer by the police!

Aravind Adiga

A democracy can only be produced if a majority movement is built. The guerilla strategy depends on a collapse of will in the ruling class to produce the social crisis out of which revolution occurs, whether the majority favors it or not.

Anarchist Communist Collective

As demonstrated in Russia and numerous other countries, when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter.

Michael Parenti

He read the words, wondering when cruelty won the vote from democracy.

Gayendra Abeywardane

In modern democracies, one is always too few and two are always too many

Idiotneil

The cunning villains used our innocence, naivety and honesty; they incited and steered our virtue, purity and fervent temperaments. When we realized the actual absurdity of the situation and began to demand our democratic rights, we were subjected to unprecedented persecution and suppression. Our youth, passion, learning, idealism and joy were all sacrificed to the terrible rule of this wicked tyranny. How can this not be blood?

Lin Zhao

Modifying Clausewitz’ aphorism—war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means—one could say that in ideologically divided countries civil war is but the continuation of parliamentarism with other means.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

Democracy can exist only in the countries where people are brave! Coward nations always live under the authoritarian regimes!

Mehmet Murat ildan

Changing entrenched systems is daunting; the odds against reshaping the nation's police forces are high. But there are few things more important than making sure their profession is the brave, honorable service it should be. We have to do it, or watch our communities and our democracy disintegrate.

Ann Medlock

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather boa!

Allen Ginsberg

A totally befuddled voter may look at a Vote for McGovern sign and do just that.

Hunter S. Thompson

I am a congenital optimist about America, but I worry that American democracy is exhibiting fatal symptoms. DC has become an acronym for Dysfunctional Capital: a swamp in which partisanship has grown poisonous, relations between the White House and Congress have paralyzed basic functions like budgets and foreign agreements, and public trust in government has all but disappeared. These symptoms are rooted in the decline of a public ethic, legalized and institutionalized corruption, a poorly educated and attention-deficit-driven electorate, and a 'gotcha' press - all exacerbated by digital devices and platforms that reward sensationalism and degrade deliberation. Without stronger and more determined leadership from the president and a recovery of a sense of civic responsibility among the governing class, the United States may follow Europe down the road of decline.

Graham Allison

It is a melancholy fact which exponents of democracy must face that, while all men may be on a level in the eyes of the State, they will continue in fact to be preposterously unequal.

John Buchan

The institution known as "school" isn't just a facility for doing classwork. It's essentially a microcosm of society, all of humanity put together in a little diorama. Bully exists in schools because war and conflict exist in the world, and school castes reflect our stratified, hierarchical society. Living in a democracy, the tyranny of the majority naturally applies at school, too. The majority -- that is to say, the people with the most friends -- are superior.

Wataru Watari

There is no middle ground for moral choice and political decision because by being on a safe side, any indecisive act poses a moral hazard to the individual freedom and integrity of a democratic society.~ Danny Castillones Sillada, The Postmodern Filipino Prince: The Moral Hazard of Political Indecision

Danny Castillones Sillada

He was holding his breath so as not to inhale the odor of democracy.

Henry James

Meanwhile, two other great currents in political thought, had a decisive significance on the development of socialist ideas: Liberalism, which had powerfully stimulated advanced minds in the Anglo-Saxon countries, Holland and Spain in particular, and Democracy in the sense. to which Rousseau gave expression in his Social Contract, and which found its most influential representatives in the leaders of French Jacobinism. While Liberalism in its social theories started off from the individual and wished to limit the state's activities to a minimum, Democracy took its stand on an abstract collective concept, Rousseau's general will, which it sought to fix in the national state. Liberalism and Democracy were pre-eminently political concepts, and since most of the original adherents of both did scarcely consider the economic conditions of society, the further development of these conditions could not be practically reconciled with the original principles of Democracy, and still less with those of Liberalism. Democracy with its motto of equality of all citizens before the law, and Liberalism with its right of man over his own person, both were wrecked on the realities of capitalist economy. As long as millions of human beings in every country have to sell their labour to a small minority of owners, and sink into the most wretched misery if they can find no buyers, the so-called equality before the law remains merely a pious fraud, since the laws are made by those who find themselves in possession of the social wealth. But in the same way there can be no talk of a right over one's own person, for that right ends when one is compelled to submit to the economic dictation of another if one does not want to starve.

Rudolf Rocker

The form of association, however, which if mankind continue to improve, must be expected in the end to predominate, is not that which can exist between a capitalist as chief, and work-people without a voice in the management, but the association of the labourers themselves on terms of equality, collectively owning the capital with which they carry on their operations, and working under managers elected and removable by themselves.

John Stuart Mill

[T]he success of democracy depends, in the end, on the reliability of the judgments we citizens make, and hence upon our capacity and determination to weigh arguments and evidence rationally.

Irving M. Copi

Rebellion without reprisal is one of democracy's perks, right?

Laura Kelly

[C]apitalism--democracy's sidekick

Laura Kelly

If political rights are necessary to set social rights in place, social rights are indispensable to make political rights 'real' and keep them in operation. The two rights need each other for their survival; that survival can only be their joint achievement.

Zygmunt Bauman

Violent ideologies speak their own language; core concepts are translated to maintain the system while appearing to support the people. Under carnism, for instance, democracy has become defined as having the freedom to choose among products that sicken our bodies and pollute our planet, rather than the freedom to eat our food and breathe our air without the risk of being poisoned. But violent ideologies are inherently undemocratic, as they rely on deception, secrecy, concentrated power, and coercion--all practices that are incompatible with a free society. While the larger system, or nation, may appear democratic, the violent system within it is not. This is one reason we don't recognize violent ideologies that exist within seemingly democratic systems; we simply aren't thinking to look for them.

Melanie Joy

When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work!" (Homer Simpson)

Matt Groening

The changes that take place when liberal Democrats replace not so liberal or compassionate Republicans (or Democrats) are merely cosmetic.

David T. Dellinger

The problem with call-in shows is quite simple, if you only dare to admit it: Democracy is best when not everyone can be heard all the time. If we are constantly reminded of all the stupid things that people say and think, it becomes rather difficult to remember the good and noble arguments for everyone to be able to participate and decide.

Johan Hakelius

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.

Charles Wheelan

One look at the officials in the American Consulate where we went for dreary paper routines was enough to make you realize what was wrong with American 'diplomacy' throughout the Fellaheen world: - stiff offcious squares with contempt even for their own Americans who happened not to wear neckties, as tho a necktie or whatever it stands for meant anything to the hungry Berbers who came into Tangiers every Saturday morning on meek asses, like Christ, carrying baskets of pitiful fruit or dates, and returned at dusk to silhouetted parades along the hill by the railroad track. The railroad track where barefooted prophets still walked and taught the Koran to children along the way. Why didn't the American consul ever walk into the urchin hall where Mohammed Maye sat smoking? or squat in behind empty buildings with old Arabs who talked with their hands? or any thing? Instead it's all private limousines, hotel restaurants, parties in the suburbs, an endless phoney rejection in the name of 'democracy' of all that's pith and moment of every land.

Jack Kerouac

In the final analysis, what is it that we call popular, democratic power? Beyond the expressed will of the people, as it is supposedly formulated, there is no appeal; here we meet the absolute, the universal, the indivisible, and the immovable. There is nothing a priori, nothing anterior to democratic power; no ideas of truth, no notions of good or bad, can bind the Popular Will. This 'will' is free in the sense that it stands above all notions of value. It is egalitarian because it is reared on arithmetic equality..It is not open to any appeal, it listens to no demand for grace, no plea for compassion. Like the Sphinx, the Popular Will is immovable in its enigmatic silence.

Tage Lindbom

Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas...

E.M. Forster

To all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?

Andy Zaltzman

Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses....As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament.

Lawrence Martin

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Democracy Quotes - Page 6

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