quotations about democracy
I'm not a slogan or a badge
Or a cross in the ballot box
Neither values or objectives
You do not represent my deepest
Thoughts and wishes
Education in obsolete skills
Stereotyping and media projection
Industrial psychologists
Plan a campaign that is financed by
Big business
You have a choice, we are your voice
Red, blue or yellow
We will blow away the green
Another five lane motorway
(You'll never get a referendum anyway)
KILLING JOKE
"Democracy"
Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state.
VLADIMIR LENIN
The State and Revolution
I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength.
EDWIN H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
My ears are ringing with the promise
The promise that they'll right the wrongs
And that they're ever gonna give you
Democracy
THE DAMNED
"Democracy?", Grave Disorder
Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
PLATO
attributed, Our Vietnam Nightmare
Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.
JOHNNY CARSON
The Tonight Show, Sep. 11, 1991
Democracy is the road to socialism.
KARL MARX
attributed, The Communist Review, 1952
A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
NORMAN MAILER
preface, The Presidential Papers
Ironic, isn't it Smithers. This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you!
MR. BURNS
"Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish", The Simpsons
The identification with the common lot which is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. It is as though we thirsted to drink at the great wells of human experience, because we knew that a daintier or less potent draught would not carry us to the end of the journey, going forward as we must in the heat and jostle of the crowd.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Third Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1941
The future is best decided by ballots, not bullets.
RONALD REAGAN
State of the Union address, Jan. 25, 1984
All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them.
JANE ADDAMS
Democracy and Social Ethics
Democracy depends on citizens being informed, and since our media, especially television (which is the most important source of news for most Americans) reports mostly what the people in power do, and repeats what the people in power say, the public is badly informed, and it means we cannot really say we have a functioning democracy.
HOWARD ZINN
Huffington Post, Jan. 28, 2010
I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct -- to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
On Democracy
Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Fools get votes in a democracy.
CATATONIA
"Fuel", Paper Scissors Stone
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H.L. MENCKEN
attributed, An Epistemic Theory of Democracy
God's hand, like a sign-board, is pointing toward democracy, and saying to the nations of the earth, "This is the way: walk ye in it."
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Democracies cannot dispense with hypocrisy any more than dictatorships can with cynicism.
GEORGES BERNANOS
We French