Democracy Quotes - Page 36

• If believers feel that their faith is trivialized and their true selves compromised by a society that will not give religious imperatives special weight, their problem is not that secularists are antidemocratic but that democracy is antiabsolutist.

  Ellen Willis

  Religious, Self, Giving

  "Freedom from Religion". The Nation, February 19, 2001.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up

  Fred Thompson

  Friends, World, Lines

  17 Copy quote

• We praise the strength, the patience and the longing of the people who did not stop thinking of freedom and democracy in these dark times

  Joachim Gauck

  Dark, Thinking, People

  10 Copy quote

• Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy -- and it is also the open window embedded in those bricks.

  Shashi Tharoor

  Together, Bricks, Window

  Speech at the UN's World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2001.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why is it that aggression in the name of God shocks secular liberal sensibilities, whereas the act of killing in the name of the secular nation, or of democracy, does not?

  Talal Asad

  Names, Doe, Killing

  Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Saba Mahmood (2013). “Is Critique Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech”, p.10

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• Im a cynic about corporate democracy and boards.

  Carl Icahn

  Boards, Cynic, Corporate

  4 Copy quote

• The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Women, Opportunity, Democracies Have

  4 Copy quote

• Increase in the wealth per capita fosters democracy; but the latter, at least according to what we have been able to observe up to now, entails great destruction of wealth and even eventually dries up the sources of it. Hence it is its own grave-digger, it destroys what gave it birth.

  Vilfredo Pareto

  Able, Birth, Wealth

  Vilfredo Pareto (1971). “Manual of political economy”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• You see few people here in America who really care very much about living a Christian life in a democratic world.

  Clare Boothe Luce

  Christian, Women, America

  Clare Boothe Luce (1941). “European spring”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For our democracy has been marred by imperialism, and it has been enlightened only by individual and sporadic efforts at freedom.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Women, Democracies Have, Effort

  4 Copy quote

• My generation has not seen one single day of peace, and my dream is for my children and the children of all Colombians to have the change to see it. I hope the guerrilla understands that the time has come to leave this 50-year confrontation behind; that the time has come to change from bullets to votes, from weapons to argumentations; that the time has come for them to continue their struggle, but within democracy.

  Juan Manuel Santos

  Dream, Children, Struggle

  41 Copy quote

• Democracy will never be supplanted by a republic of experts—and that is a very good thing.

  Thomas Piketty

  Experts, Republic, Good Things

  Thomas Piketty (2014). “Capital in the Twenty-First Century”, p.2, Harvard University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a Democracy, the real rulers are the dexterous manipulators of votes, with their placemen, the mechanics who so skillfully operate the hidden springs which move the puppets in the arena of democratic elections. Men of this kind are ever ready with loud speeches lauding equality; in reality, they rule the people as any despot or military dictator might rule it.

  Konstantin Pobedonostsev

  Spring, Military, Real

  22 Copy quote

• What with the political monopoly, the Cheka and the Red Army, all that now existed of the 'Commune-State' of our dreams was a theoretical myth. The war, the internal measures against counterrevolution, and the famine (which had created a bureaucratic rationing apparatus) had killed off Soviet democracy. How could it revive, and when? The Party lived in the certain knowledge that the slightest relaxation of its authority would give day to reaction.

  Victor Serge

  Dream, War, Party

  Victor Serge (2002). “Memoirs of a Revolutionary”, p.133, University of Iowa Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Immigration is everyone’s business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate.

  Geoffrey Blainey

  Ideas, Issues, Important

  "All for Australia". Book by Geoffrey Blainey, 1984.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Unequal Democracy is the sort of book to which every political scientist should aspire--it is methodologically rigorous, conceptually serious, and above all, it addresses urgent concerns of our fellow citizens. As Bartels shows, much of what we think we know about the politics of economic inequality is dead wrong. Bartels's perplexing and often unexpected discoveries should help refocus the gathering public debate about inequality and what to do about it.

  Robert D. Putnam

  Book, Thinking, Economic Inequality

  14 Copy quote

• I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.

  Emir Kusturica

  Cities, People, Citizens

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Despite the dubious statistics … democracy is a thing of value for which we should be fighting.

  Rory Stewart

  Fighting, Dubious, Statistics

  4 Copy quote

• My parents told us how they felt but never imposed their beliefs on us, although I appreciate I got a healthy sense of democracy from them.

  Ahmet Zappa

  Appreciate, Parent, Healthy

  "Interview: Ahmet Zappa" by Sharon Krum, www.theguardian.com. July 28, 2006.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you make the claim that something on the Internet is going to be good for democracy, you often [hear], 'Are you talking about the thing with the singing cats?'

  Clay Shirky

  Cat, Talking, Singing

  7 Copy quote

• The virtue of democracy is that is has placed limits on the absoluteness of power.

  Robert Morrison MacIver

  Limits, Virtue

  11 Copy quote

• But we either believe in democracy or we don't. If we do, then, we must say categorically, without qualification, that no restraint from the any democratic processes, other than by the ordinary law of the land, should be allowed. If you believe in democracy, you must believe in it unconditionally. If you believe that men should be free, then, they should have the right of free association, of free speech, of free publication. Then, no law should permit those democratic processes to be set at nought.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Believe, Men, Law

  Legislative Assembly Debates, April 27, 1955.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• You’re talking about Rwanda or Bangladesh, or Cambodia, or the Philippines. They’ve got democracy, according to Freedom House. But have you got a civilised life to lead? People want economic development first and foremost. The leaders may talk something else. You take a poll of any people. What is it they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools.

  Lee Kuan Yew

  Jobs, School, Home

  10 Copy quote

• Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

  Theodor Adorno

  Emotional, Source, Fascism

  Theodor W. Adorno, Samuel H. Flowerman (1964). “The Authoritarian Personality: Studies in Prejudice”

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.

  Lucy Stone

  Women, Intelligent, Majority

  21 Copy quote