Democracy Quotes - Page 37

• Democracy: An institution in which the whole is equal to the scum of the parts.

  Keith Preston

  Art, Scum, Institutions

  7 Copy quote

• With calm, knowledgeable precision, Daniel Ziblatt wades into the adjacent swamps of federalism and nineteenth-century European history, emerging with hands full of gems. Beneath the tangle of great statesmen and national culture he discovers conflicting regional political interests, sharp regional variations in political capacity, fearful defenses against excessive democracy, coercive conquest of weak states, and unintended consequences galore. Read, think, and learn.

  Charles Tilly

  Thinking, Hands, Political

  8 Copy quote

• You got the impression that each and every little individual was feeling pretty important doing the pretty important job of building up a State . The atmosphere reminded me of a word it was ’democracy.’

  Anna Louise Strong

  Jobs, Building Up, Feelings

  8 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

• And in Canada we, you know, it costs us three or $400 million to have an election. You know, it's always been my position that we shouldn't complain about that; that's the price of admission for a living in a great democracy.

  Rick Mercer

  Complaining, Three, Cost

  "Rick Mercer, Hot On The Canadian Campaign Trail". "Weekend Edition Saturday" with Scott Simon, www.npr.org. April 23, 2011.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.

  Pentti Linkola

  Government, People, Stupidity

  25 Copy quote

• As you know from reading many of these Negro writers, we don't deal too much with the discussion of democracy and what it means and how improvisation fits in all that.

  Stanley Crouch

  Reading, Mean, Too Much

  13 Copy quote

• Democratic societies can no longer give religious fanatics a free hand to abuse and murder non believers. Such action betrays contempt for the basic human rights which animate any democracy with meaning.

  Armstrong Williams

  Religious, Rights, Hands

  9 Copy quote

• We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

  Herman Melville

  Israel, People, Liberty

  Herman Melville (1850). “White-jacket: or, The world in a man-of-war”, p.151

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So in Asia I want to make - I want to succeed to make a model of what success, practicing democracy, and market economy. Then that will give a good influence over Asian countries.

  Kim Dae-jung

  Country, Giving, Want

  53 Copy quote

• Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth.

  Albert Pike

  Mean, Men, Two

  Albert Pike “Morals and Dogma : Scottish Rite in Freemasonry”, Lulu.com

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longer believe in politics. It is for this reason that we find both high levels of support for democracy in cross-national opinion polls and high rates of political apathy.

  Mark Mazower

  Believe, Commitment, Support

  4 Copy quote

• Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.

  Mirabeau B. Lamar

  Mind, Genius, Guardian

  "Hargrave Military Academy: Catalog and Announcements for session 1944-1945", 1944.

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• Democracy can only be measured on the existence of an opposition

  Poul Henningsen

  Existence, Opposition

  6 Copy quote

• I understand that the end does not justify the means. And this should be a lasting value for democracy.

  Park Geun-hye

  Mean, Doe, Ends

  10 Copy quote

• The fundamental truth of democracy is the belief that the real pleasures of life are increased by sharing them.

  Henry Dwight Sedgwick

  Life, Real, Fundamentals

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps myself the first, at some expense of popularity, to unfold the true character of Jefferson, it is too late for me to become his apologist. Nor can I have any disposition to do it. I admit that his politics are tinctured with fanaticism, that he is too much in earnest in his democracy, that he has been a mischievous enemy to the principle measures of our past administration, that he is crafty & persevering in his objects, that he is not scrupulous about the means of success, nor very mindful of truth, and that he is a contemptible hypocrite.

  Alexander Hamilton

  Truth, Character, Hypocrite

  Alexander Hamilton (1851). “Correspondence [contin.] 1795-1804; 1777; 1791. Letters of H.G. 1789. Address to public creditors. 1790. Vindication of funding system. 1791”, p.419

  61 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fact is that Britain is the most warlike nation on earth. In the history of armed combat, we are the only democracy to have declared war on another democracy - England versus Finland in the second world war, in case you're interested - and we're always at the front of the queue when Johnny Foreigner gets a bit uppity. Who stood up to the Kaiser? Who stood up to Adolf? And let's not forget the Argies. What other country would have sent its fleet halfway round the world and lost 250 men to protect a flock of sheep and some oil that might or might not be there? We're still at it.

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Country, War, Men

  17 Copy quote

• Only in England is the perversion of language regarded as a victory for democracy.

  Anthony Burgess

  America, Victory, World

  11 Copy quote

• Money power cannot be separated from democratic power without miscarriage and ensuing frustration - political and economic. Democracy implies the sovereignty of man; and, since man cannot be sovereign without the money power, there can not be democracy under the political money system.

  E.C. Riegel

  Miscarriage, Frustration, Power

  7 Copy quote

• Together, the property rights and public choice schools show only that, if you start by assuming a purely individualistic model of human behavior and treat politics as if it were a pale imitation of the market, democracy will, indeed, make no sense.

  Paul Starr

  School, Rights, Choices

  "The Meaning Of Privatization". Yale Law & Policy Review, Volume 6, 1988.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Having created the conditions that make markets possible, democracy must do all the things that markets undo or cannot do.

  Benjamin Barber

  Libertarian, Conditions

  Benjamin Barber (2001). “Jihad vs. McWorld: Terrorism's Challenge to Democracy”, Ballantine Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• For over a century, popular struggles in the democracies have used the nation-state to temper raw capitalism. The power of voters has offset the power of capital. But as national barriers have come down in the name of freer commerce, so has the capacity of governments to manage capitalism in a broad public interest. So the real issue is not "trade" but democratic governance.

  Robert Kuttner

  Real, Struggle, Democracies Have

  "Globalization and Its Critics". The American Prospect, Volume 12, July 2-16, 2001.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Though editorialists at The New York Times and The Washington Post still don't get it, most Democrats in Congress finally do: Today's trade disputes are no longer mostly about tariffs, quotas, or free entry of goods. They are about the ground rules for capitalism. Are there to be only property rights? What about the other rights that liberal democracies have fought for since the 1880s?

  Robert Kuttner

  New York, Democracies Have, Rights

  6 Copy quote

• When we were the political slaves of King George, and wanted to be free, we called the maxim that "all men are created equal" a self evident truth; but now when we have grown fat, and have lost all dread of being slaves ourselves, we have become so greedy to be masters that we call the same maxim "a self evident lie" The fourth of July has not quite dwindled away; it is still a great day-for burning fire-crackers!!!

  Abraham Lincoln

  Kings, Lying, Men

  Abraham Lincoln (1989). “Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45”, p.359, Library of America

  6 Copy quote

  Show source