Ian Buruma Quotes
Citizenship of a democratic state means living by the laws of the country. A liberal democracy cannot survive when part of the population believes that divine laws trump those made by man.
Quotes to Explore
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Is America truly a democracy? Has America ever been a democracy with the institution of slavery?
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Islam's laws are fixed and that is why Islam is stable.
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I have not broken the laws of the United States or the laws of the Dominican Republic.
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Safe storage and child access prevention laws are critical steps as we seek to reduce the occurrence of accidental shootings and suicides involving guns.
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By its very nature, hard-line ideology is self-serving and self-perpetuating; its primary goal is to survive - and that precludes everything.
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I don't order laws, I propose them.
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The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.
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The ultimate binding element in the medieval order was subordination to the divine will and its earthly representatives, notably the pope.
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If a jerk burns the flag, America is not threatened, democracy is not under siege, freedom is not at risk.
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Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I'll be right there with you as a citizen - inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.
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When public men indulge themselves in abuse, when they deny others a fair trial, when they resort to innuendo and insinuation, to libel, scandal, and suspicion, then our democratic society is outraged, and democracy is baffled.
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Marry an outdoors woman. Then if you throw her out into the yard on a cold night, she can still survive.
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No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.
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Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.
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It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.
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I think that the failure of newspaper competition in a community is a very serious handicap to the dissemination of the knowledge that the citizens need to participate in a democracy.
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Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.
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In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
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We should not act like we know that the universe began with the Big Bang... we'll see that there are strong suggestions that the Big Bang was perhaps not really the beginning of existence, but really just the beginning of our local universe, often called a pocket universe.
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We all think people deserve second chances. None of us are perfect.
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One hasn't become a writer until one has distilled writing into a habit, and that habit has been forced into an obsession. Writing has to be an obsession. It has to be something as organic, physiological and psychological as speaking or sleeping or eating.
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I do have an obligation to make sure that I am following some of the rules. I can't simply ignore laws that are out there.
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We don't mind working hard to be successful. We don't mind working to be at our best.
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Citizenship of a democratic state means living by the laws of the country. A liberal democracy cannot survive when part of the population believes that divine laws trump those made by man.
