Democracy Quotes
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Where liberals see as an ever-more-splendid diversity of colors, creeds, ethnicities, ideologies, beliefs and lifestyles, the Right sees the disintegration of a country, a nation, a people, and its replacement with a Tower of Babel. Visions in conflict that democracy cannot reconcile.
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The challenge as we saw in the Nigerian project was to restructure the economy decisively in the direction of a modern free market as an appropriate environment for cultivation of freedom and democracy and the natural emergence of a new social order.
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I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.
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True democracy consists not in lowering the standard but in giving everybody, so far as possible, a chance of measuring up to the standard.
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Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.
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The transition from tyranny to democracy is very hard. The Syrian people have to handle this in a way that works in Syria. And the brutality of the Assad regime is unacceptable.
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The brave and clear platform adopted by this convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.
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Since the Bush-Cheney Administration took office in January 2001, controlling the major oil and natural gas fields of the world had been the primary, though undeclared, priority of US foreign policy... Not only the invasion of Iraq, but also the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, had nothing to do with 'democracy,' and everything to do with pipeline control across Central Asia and the militarization of the Middle East.
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All we want is to carry out the greatest expression of a free democracy and vote on Catalonia's future. This is not about independence: it is about fundamental civil rights and the universal right of self-determination.
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I'm a pessimist about the euro, but not about Europe. So the southern periphery, Spain, Italy, Greece, leave - Italy might be the first to go - and the rest stay. That will work just fine. But unless they want to give up democracy, I don't see greater fiscal union as the answer.
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If we have a chance of succeeding and bringing stability and democracy to Iraq, it will mean learning from our mistakes, not denying them and not ignoring them.
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Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.
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Once you don't vote your ideals... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy.
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My submission to you is we're fighting the war on terror not overseas but in our own streets, and we'd be spending vast more fortunes to try to be a defensive country to protect ourselves rather than an offensive country to spread democracy wherever people yearn for it.
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I think if people value democracy, they had damn well better get out and exercise their right to vote while their vote still means something.
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Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can't be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is governed by power, not justice, by false democracy, not real freedom.
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I'm a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.
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I did not suggest that Iran is a democracy; just the opposite. I talked about it being a repressive theocracy. What I think is indisputable is that even within this repressive regime, the political leaders there - including the Supreme Leader - are sensitive to the concerns of the population within bounds.
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The American people need to know the truth. The American people need to see the truth. In a democracy, letting the people know the truth is the essence of what it means to be free.
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We have been deformed by educational and religious institutions that treat us as members of an audience instead of actors in a drama, so we become adults who treat democracy as a spectator sport.
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I have no illusions about our elected politicians. Pakistani democracy is anything but perfect.
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Democracy and violence can ill go together.
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We have a huge struggle for our sense of what a democracy is. We're not living in reality when we think we have some sort of democracy. We're really on the edge. We have two presidents who lost the popular vote but won the election. This is not working.
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With few exceptions, democracy has not brought good government to new developing countries...What Asians value may not necessarily be what Americans or Europeans value. Westerners value the freedoms and liberties of the individual. As an Asian of Chinese cultural backround, my values are for a government which is honest, effective and efficient.
