quotations about democracy
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
TOM STOPPARD
Jumpers
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The American Democrat
Kiss the ladies, shake hands with the fellows
And it's open for business like a cheap bordello
And they call it democracy
BRUCE COCKBURN
"Call It Democracy", World of Wonders
Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation.
FAREED ZAKARIA
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Good Society
When threatened, the first thing a democracy gives up is democracy.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook
Democracy works when people claim it as their own.
BILL MOYERS
The Nation, Jan. 22, 2007
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks
Is this what you call democracy?
They're killing us, and you're killing me
ADOLESCENTS
"Democracy"
A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon.
BILL CLINTON
speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Aug. 28, 2013
In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king--but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy
A democracy will never, save after an awful catastrophe, return what has once been conceded to it, for to do so would be to admit an inferiority in itself, of which, except by some almost unbearable misfortune, it could never be convinced.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The generation you consult will be more democratic and better instructed than our own; for the progress of democracy, though not constant, is certain, and the progress of knowledge is both constant and certain.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, December 14, 1880