Democracy Quotes
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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.
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Of all the principles which constitute Liberal Democracy, internationalism is the clearest, the most distinctive, and the one with the longest history.
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Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise.
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The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation.
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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.
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Poetry is the ultimate democracy.
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Israel, our great friend and the one true democracy in the Middle East has been snubbed and criticized by an administration that lacks moral clarity... President Obama has not been a friend to Israel. He has treated Iran with tender love and care and made it a great power.
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I'm a great aficionado of history. I was deeply affected by seeing the disintegration of any chance of democracy coping with fascism in the Weimar republic, where woolly-minded, well-meaning liberalism actually allowed the forces of darkness to use democracy, to exploit democracy, to overturn democracy.
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In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
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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.
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You want sanity, democracy, community, an intact Earth? We can't get there, obeying Constitutional theory and law crafted by slave masters, imperialists, corporate masters, and Nature destroyers. We can't get there, kneeling before robed lawyers stockpiling class plunder precedent up their venerable sleeves. So isn't disobedience the challenge of our age? Principled, inventive, escalating disobedience to liberate our souls, to transfigure our work as humans on this Earth.
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I have visited sweatshops, factories, and crowded slums. If I could not see it, I could smell it. The foundation of society is laid upon a basis of . . . individualism, conquest and exploitation . . . A social order such as this, built upon such wrong and basic principles, is bound to retard the development of all. The output of a cotton mill or a coal mine is considered of greater importance than the production of healthy, happy-hearted and free human beings. We, the people, are not free. Our democracy is but a name.
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The war on drugs is not being won, and it continues to threaten stability and democracy not only in the Andes but throughout the Caribbean as well, where tiny police and military forces are outclassed by the sophisticated equipment in the hands of traffickers passing through the region on the way to their market in this country.
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The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
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Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.
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The Russian people chose democracy at the beginning of the 1990s and this was their final choice.
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Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both. . . . Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.
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Today, Israeli democracy has spoken its piece, in a loud and clear voice.
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'Our concepts of ballot-box democracy may need to be modified to produce strong governments capable of making difficult decisions.'
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Iraq is part of a legitimate American effort not to have democracy everywhere but to have democracy somewhere.
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The US constitution's First Amendment rights only cover Americans, but I believe that in a democracy the competition of ideas and free speech should combat beliefs that it does not agree with - more speech and debate, not censorship.
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We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.
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Colonial possessions added to the prestige, and to a much lesser degree to the wealth, of Europe. But the primary cause of Western affluence and power is internal – the institutions of science, democracy, and capitalism acting in concert.
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Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.
