quotations about democracy
Modern democracies will face difficult new challenges--fighting terrorism, adjusting to globalization, adapting to an aging society--and they will have to make their system work much better than it currently does. That means making democratic decision-making effective, reintegrating constitutional liberalism into the practice of democracy, rebuilding broken political institutions and civic associations. Perhaps most difficult of all, it requires that those with immense power in our societies embrace their responsibilities, lead, and set standards that are not only legal, but moral. Without this inner stuffing, democracy will become an empty shell, not simply inadequate but potentially dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life.
FAREED ZAKARIA
The Future of Freedom
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Letters From Burma
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
ALAN COREN
attributed, Return of the Portable Curmudgeon
As to the members of a Democracy, they are the best sort of people in the world; but then they are but a puny sort of gentry, as to strength, put them all together; and apt to be a little defective in point of understanding.
JEREMY BENTHAM
A Fragment on Government
Red tape red tape bureacratic ache noise of democracy red tape red tape white noise white noise high speed decoys noise of democracy white noise white noise wait in line you'll be one and you'll be two and you'll wait in line this line that line leads to another line noise of democracy sign here sign there sign on the dotted line this line that line sign here sign there three four five six seven wait in line wait in line take a number take a number take a number for information take a number for validation the sons and daughters of the filing line are biding time in the firing line take a number take a number take a number take a number for certification take a number for information for certification for validation for information for validation carbon carbon carbon paper noise of democracy bargain bargain bargain paper noise of democracy red tape red tape white noise white noise this line that line leads to another line noise of democracy sign here sign there sign on the dotted line red tape red tape burearcratic ache noise of democracy white noise white noise high speed decoys noise of democracy carbon carbon carbon paper noise of democracy bargain bargain paper noise of democracy
BLUE MEANIES
"The Noise of Democracy", Full Throttle
Democracy is the menopause of Western society.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
Education in democracy must be carried on within the Party so that members can understand the meaning of democratic life, the meaning of the relationship between democracy and centralism, and the way in which democratic centralism should be put into practice. Only in this way can we really extend democracy within the Party and at the same time avoid ultra-democracy and the laissez-faire that destroys discipline.
MAO ZEDONG
"The Role of the Chinese Communist Party in the National War", Oct. 1938
Let the people think they govern, and they will be govern'd.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave.
JANE ADDAMS
Twenty Years at Hull-House
Perhaps I could put this to you too: that it is not only the decision that matters, I mean democracy is about how you do things, not just what the outcome is.
TONY BENN
The Sizewell Syndrome
Democracy is what we do here and now, and not what somebody else does for us, later, when they get into the seats of power.
TONY BENN
Fighting Back: Speaking Out for Socialism in the Eighties
A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion; that things even salutary should not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when they may be put into a form to be willingly swallowed, and that a great deal of indulgence is necessary to strengthen habits of harmony and fraternity.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Edward Livingston, Apr. 4, 1824
Does this mean that I am an opponent of democracy? Not at all. Fiction for fiction, it is the least harmful. But it is well not to confound its promises with realities. The fiction consists in the postulate of all democratic government, that the great majority of the electors in a state are enlightened, free, honest, and patriotic--whereas such a postulate is a mere chimera. The majority in any state is necessarily composed of the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least capable; the state is therefore at the mercy of accident and passion, and it always ends by succumbing at one time or another to the rash conditions which have been made for its existence. A man who condemns himself to live upon the tight-rope must inevitably fall; one has no need to be a prophet to foresee such a result.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
EMIL CIORAN
History & Utopia
Democracy is for those who can buy it.
JELLO BIAFRA
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1986
The ritual performance of the legend of democracy in the autumn of 2012 promises the conspicuous consumption of $5.8 billion, enough money, thank God, to prove that our flag is still there. Forbidden the use of words apt to depress a Q Score or disturb a Gallup poll, the candidates stand as product placements meant to be seen instead of heard, their quality to be inferred from the cost of their manufacture. The sponsors of the event, generous to a fault but careful to remain anonymous, dress it up with the bursting in air of star-spangled photo ops, abundant assortments of multiflavored sound bites, and the candidates so well-contrived that they can be played for jokes, presented as game-show contestants, or posed as noble knights-at-arms setting forth on vision quests, enduring the trials by klieg light until on election night they come to judgment before the throne of cameras by whom and for whom they were produced.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Feast of Fools", Lapham's Quarterly: Politics
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
LORD ACTON
The History of Freedom in Antiquity
The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history.
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
Third Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1941