Democracy Quotes
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Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal.
Chester Himes
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It was an ideological war for some-the defenders of democracy versus the rebel strong-arm charismatic leaders. Or the capitalist land-grabbers versus the protectors of the people, take your pick.
Joe Haldeman
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Scholars have been arguing for a long time whether the Soviet Union could have been turned into some kind of social democracy. I doubt it myself. I think what Gorbachev didn't quite understand, until it was too late, is that his efforts at change unleashed new, certrifical forces he hadn't counted on. He opened the door a crack and a huge wind blew it open.
David Hoffman
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I'm a democrat. I will fight until the end to defend democracy and the will of the people.
Marine Le Pen
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The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.
Aristotle
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Democracy, indeed, has a fair-appearing name and conveys the impression of bringing equal rights to all through equal laws, but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a most practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man than many of them, section 2and if even this seems to some a difficult feat, it is quite inevitable that the other alternative should be acknowledged to be impossible; for it does not belong to the majority of men to acquire virtue. And again, even though a base man should obtain supreme power, yet he is preferable to the masses of like character, as the history of the Greeks and barbarians and of the Romans themselves proves. section 3For successes have always been greater and more frequent in the case both of cities and of individuals under kings than under popular rule, and disasters do not happen so frequently under monarchies as under mob-rule. Indeed, if ever there has been a prosperous democracy, it has in any case been at its best for only a brief period, so long, that is, as the people had neither the numbers nor the strength sufficient to cause insolence to spring up among them as the result of good fortune or jealousy as the result of ambition.
Cassius Dio
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The bipolar world of the Cold War is history. The new world order, however, is not the One World dreamed of by Wilsonian idealists. It is a Balkanizing world where race, tribe, culture and creed matter most, and democracy is seen not as an end in itself but as a means to an end - the accretion of power by one's own kind to achieve one's own dreams.
Pat Buchanan
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Writers, artists, and commentators on websites are detained or thrown into jail when they reflect on democracy, opening up, reform and reason. This is the reality of China.
Ai Weiwei
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I think my most important advice is to understand what are the foundations of a healthy democracy and how we have to engage in citizenship continuously, not just when something upsets us; not just when there's an election or when an issue pops up for a few weeks. It's hard work.
Barack Obama
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This is why we feel that democracy's important: because democracy allows you to have small explosions and therefore avoid the bigger explosions.
Indira Gandhi
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I'd like people to be educated on the voting machines, making sure that our democracy isn't being hijacked by computer technology. There's no reason there can't be a paper trail on those machines.
Eddie Vedder
Pearl Jam
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As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.
Paul Wellstone
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Democracy is not what we don't want. Democracy is what we do want. It is a set of affirmative values by which we can move forward. If we cannot insert our values into our vote, and our vote is simply against what we fear most, then we are a ship lost at sea.
Jill Stein
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If you care for the quality of life in our American democracy, then you have to be for censorship.
Irving Kristol
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Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world.
Mark McKinnon
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It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.
Alexander Hamilton
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There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.
Katharine Graham
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If someone says, 'Democracy is a sham, those people don't speak for me... the system's rigged,' you say, 'Vote.' Someone says, 'I was making a statement by not voting,' and then you say, 'Well I can't hear it.'
Jesse Williams
