Democracy Quotes
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Democracy has no place for the kind of justice implied in an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Democracy is a system for the resolution of conflict, not for vengeance. Simple black-white notions of right and wrong do not fit into democratic politics. Political controversies result from the fact that the issues are complex, and men may properly have differences of opinion about them. The most terrible of all over-simplifications is the notion that politics is a contest between good people and bad people. Democracy is based on a profound insight into human nature, the realization that all men are sinful, all are imperfect, all are prejudiced, and none knows the whole truth. That is why we need liberty and why we have an obligation to hear all men. Liberty gives us a chance to learn from other people, to become aware of our own limitations, and to correct our bias. Even when we disagree with other people we like to think that they speak from good motives, and while we realize that all men are limited, we do not let ourselves imagine that any man is bad. Democracy is a political system for people who are not sure that they are right.
Elmer Eric Schattschneider
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Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in its veins.
Edward Kennedy
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Working with Uniqlo is probably the most incredible template of democracy in fashion, and it's nice that my design can be accessible to anyone, on all different levels.
Jonathan Anderson
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The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was indeed a vital instrument of democracy, ensuring the integrity and reliability of a democratic process that we as a Country hold so dear.
Charles B. Rangel
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You know, I'm not comfortable with people whose politics are static in a democracy.
Steve Earle
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We should insist that governments receiving American aid live up to standards of accountability and transparency, and we should support countries that embrace market reforms, democracy, and the rule of law.
Lee H. Hamilton
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No. What would I look like fighting for equality with the white man? I don't want to go down that low. I want the true democracy that'll raise me and that white man up raise America up.
Fannie Lou Hamer
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We need an attitude of defiance, not an attitude of cowardice. Out in the street, that's how we are winning against the TransCanada Pipeline. This is how we have delayed the Trans-Pacific Partnership and forced it into an election season, gotten everybody to stand against it. Democracy is not about surrender.
Jill Stein
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Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war of the knife between different ideas.
Mahatma Gandhi
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Indeed you can usually tell when the concepts of democracy and citizenship are weakening. There is an increase in the role of charity and in the worship of volunteerism. These represent the élite citizen's imitation of noblesse oblige; that is, of pretending to be aristocrats or oligarchs, as opposed to being citizens.
John Ralston Saul
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My life had been defined by the apartheid years. Now we were going into an era of democracy... and I believed that I didn't really have a function as a useful artist in that anymore.
Athol Fugard
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The President, in talking about freedom and democracy, is sparking a wave of very positive democratic sentiment that might help us override both Islamic fundamentalism that has formed in that region, and also some of the hatred for our policies of invading Iraq.
Bill Richardson
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That was the miracle of Abraham Lincoln, politician. He pursued the high purpose of moving justice forward via the low arts of patronage and patronization. Indeed, in a democracy, it is usually the only way great deeds are done.
Joe Klein
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And one of the frustrating parts, but it's an inherent part of our democracy, is we have separation of powers.
George Pataki
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All such men are, or ought to be, agreed, that simple governments are despotisms; and of all despotisms, a democracy, though the least durable, is the most violent.
Fisher Ames
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I think, at the heart of the idea of American democracy, there is something tender.
Derek Walcott
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If you'd come to me in 2012, when the last presidential election was raging and we were cooking up ever more complicated ways to monetize Facebook data, and told me that Russian agents in the Kremlin's employ would be buying Facebook ads to subvert American democracy, I'd have asked where your tin-foil hat was.
Antonio Garcia Martinez
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Our sages in the great constitutional convention... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often... oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.
Fisher Ames
