Democracy Quotes
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Because Selma shows us that America is not the project of any one person. Because the single-most powerful word in our democracy is the word 'We.' 'We The People.' 'We Shall Overcome.' 'Yes We Can.' That word is owned by no one. It belongs to everyone.
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Our society is not perfect and this will come as no surprise to many of you. But liberty, you see, that precious child of our liberal democracy only two hundred years old, has one notable side effect. When virtue is at liberty, so to some extent is vice. In a free world there is, alas, more common crime than in a dictatorial system.
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Reality has changed, and we changed with it. However, I never changed sides. I have always been on the side of justice, democracy and social equality.
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What’s happened is that, almost overnight, we’ve switched from democracy in real-property recording to oligarchy in real-property recording. There was no court case behind this, no statute from Congress or the state legislatures. It was accomplished in a private corporate decision. The banks just did it.
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I just have a hunch that Stalin is not that kind of man. Harry Hopkins says he's not and that he doesn't want anything except security for his own country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won't try to annex anything and will work with me for a world of democracy and peace.
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Democracy is not a spectator sport.
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The Athenian democracy suffered much from that narrowness of patriotism which is the ruin of all nations.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is a time to honor the greatest champion of racial equality who taught a nation - through compassion and courage - about democracy, nonviolence and racial justice.
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Democracy requires information. Plato knew that informed decision-making requires knowledge.
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A lot of people say that India has been held back by its democracy. But let's remember that, despite being a poor country, India's democracy meant that its government never let millions of people starve.
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Democracy is stronger than terrorism, and we will not cower to the terrorists' campaign of fear.
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I don't run democracy. I train troops to defend democracy and I happen to be their surrogate father and mother as well as their commanding general.
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Politics matters. Ideas matter. Democracy matters, because all of us need to be able to make a difference.
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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.
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The modern infrastructures that exists in the world all contribute to the advancement of human rights and democracy.
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Having an election with only one candidate running is impossible. This is not a democracy.
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If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.
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As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both.
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Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave.
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Western people ask me whether it is a paradox that I am King but support democracy. I have to tell them that in Thailand, the King is the guarantor of democracy.
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To find ways of practicing democracy, not ways of orating about it, is our great problem.
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When the voices of democracy are silenced, freedom becomes a hollow concept. No man or woman should be sentenced to the shadows of silence for something he or she has said or written.
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There are only two forces that can withstand the force of the war's spirit when it seizes upon the world. The one is the force of an independently thinking, free, and articulate democracy. The other is the force of an instructed and enlightened public opinion.
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The Capitol serves as a beacon of American liberty, freedom and democracy, and Rosa Parks served as the mother of the America we grew to be.
