Democracy Quotes
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Freedom of expression - in particular, freedom of the press - guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy.
Corazon Aquino
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If I were God, or the sultan, or just the chief justice, this prescription for change would look very different from what I propose here. Citizens United would be overturned. Voting rights protections would be restored. Partisan gerrymandering would be legislated and litigated into oblivion. The Electoral College might be dissolved. But to paraphrase former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, you don't wage de-devolution with the power you wish for; you wage it with the power you have. As a matter of both political reality and human mortality, the Supreme Court is out of reach for a generation. To protect democracy, we must otherwise intervene. This manifesto, therefore, is a platform for change built of six wholly unrelated planks--economic, regulatory, militant, educational, inspirational, harmonious--to counter the forces of ruinous fragmentation. . .
Bob Garfield
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Democracy rests upon two pillars: one, the principle that all men are equally entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; and the other, the conviction that such equal opportunity will most advance civilization.
Louis D. Brandeis
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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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The best way to demonstrate the values of a western democracy is you put Osama bin Laden on trial; you challenge what he says.
Ken Livingstone
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Democracy is a difficult art of government, demanding of its citizens high ratios of courage and literacy, and at the moment we lack both the necessary habits of mind and a sphere of common reference.
Lewis H. Lapham
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Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The continued vitality of our Constitution and the survival of each freedom it protects depend upon the right to vote and the vibrant democracy it affords us. In short, the right to vote underlies each of our other rights.
Amy Klobuchar
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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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Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes.
Fisher Ames