Democracy Quotes
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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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Ultimately, it's not our responsibility to turn Afghanistan into a 21st-century, vibrant, economic, liberal democracy with a little L. Our responsibility is to keep Americans safe, to make sure we don't have a failed state in a region. It's not our responsibility to reconstruct Afghanistan.
Martha McSally
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The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.
Henry David Thoreau
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And a democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices.
Plato
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Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation.
Atifete Jahjaga
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Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
Bertrand Russell
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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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Our democracy poses problems and these problems must and shall be solved by courageous leadership.
Charles Edison
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The contribution of Communism to the nihilism of democratic despair has been to shear humanism off democracy, to reduce the concept of democracy to crass materialism, to interpret life in terms of bread alone. The Nazis, as anti-humanistic as the Communists, have elevated the Communist Have-Not doctrine into a war cry for the Have-Not states.
Dorothy Thompson
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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
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The world was never more unsafe for democracy then it is today.
Stanley Baldwin
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Here's to democracy. May we get the government we deserve.
Rick Mercer
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Christians living in a democracy should always vote if they can. If they cannot in conscience bring themselves to vote for any of the candidates on offer (in the UK quite often there are several candidates for a parliamentary seat) they might consider deliberately spoiling the ballot paper as a sad protest which still says 'but I believe in being involved'.
N. T. Wright
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The problem is there is no such thing as a viable democracy made up of experts, zealots, politicians and spectators.
Elizabeth Coleman
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137 years later, Memorial Day remains one of America's most cherished patriotic observances. The spirit of this day has not changed - it remains a day to honor those who died defending our freedom and democracy.
Doc Hastings
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'Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy.'
Samuel P. Huntington
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In order every one in our homeland learns principles of democracy and the peaceful transition of power, and in order to stabilize and develop multiple choices in democratic practice.
Ali Abdullah Saleh
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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