quotations about democracy
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
Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
In Quest of Democracy
The sides are being divided now. It’s very obvious. So if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re suddenly anti-American. Its breeding fear of being on the wrong side. Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.
SAM SHEPARD
The Village Voice, Nov. 12, 2004
I honor the passion for power and rule as little in the people as in a king. It is a vicious principle, exist where it may. If by democracy be meant the exercise of sovereignty by the people under all those provisions and self-imposed restraints which tend most to secure equal laws, and the rights of each and all, then I shall be proud to bear its name. But the unfettered multitude is not dearer to me than the unfettered king.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
It is the life of democracy to favor equality.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
HELEN KELLER
Out of the Dark
In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
Democracy washes its dirty linen in public ... but it gets it clean.
FRANK CRANE
Four Minute Essays
What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Men of Destiny
Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.
THOMAS MANN
The Coming Victory of Democracy
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty.
JOHN ADAMS
letter to John Taylor, 1814
Back then, before it became clear that democracy was best served by a drunken electorate, the bars in New York City were required to close on Election Day.
LAWRENCE BLOCK
You Could Call It Murder
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
letter to George Sand, 1871
In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
ANATOLE FRANCE
Penguin Island
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
"Definition of Democracy", August 1, 1858
The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be.
EDWIN H. LAND
address at MIT, "Generation of Greatness: The Idea of a University in an Age of Science", May 22, 1957
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
JAMES MADISON
attributed, Quote Junkie Presidents Edition
A democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness sake, I will call it the idea of freedom.
THEODORE PARKER
speech, May 29, 1850
We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force. In the past, it has been movements for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to flourishing democracies; movements that continue today. This doesn’t mean abandoning our values and ideals; wherever we can, it’s in our interest to help foster democracy through the diplomatic and economic resources at our disposal. But even as we provide such help, we should be clear that the institutions of democracy – free markets, a free press, a strong civil society – cannot be built overnight, and they cannot be built at the end of a barrel of a gun. And so we must realize that the freedoms FDR once spoke of – especially freedom from want and freedom from fear – do not just come from deposing a tyrant and handing out ballots; they are only realized once the personal and material security of a people is ensured as well.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, Nov. 20, 2006