Democracy Quotes - Page 38

• 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

• Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.

  Helen Suzman

  Country, Party, Boss

  13 Copy quote

• Democracy is the suggestion box for slaves.

  Stefan Molyneux

  Suggestions, Libertarian, Slave

  31 Copy quote

• The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government.

  Walter E. Williams

  Government, Vision, Liberty

  100 Copy quote

• The spread of democracy is a wonderful thing-it is a necessary foundation for peace-and it can happen. But it cannot be advanced by force, and still less by the creation of a new empire, an idea that is as unworkable as it morally mistaken. Empire, the embodiment of force, violates equity on a global scale. No lover of freedom can give it support. It is especially contrary to the founding principles of the United States.

  Jonathan Schell

  Ideas, Giving, Support

  7 Copy quote

• Politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive.

  Ronald Reagan

  Humble, Government, Order

  Remarks at a Dallas Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast, delivered 23 August 1984 at Reunion Arena, Dallas, TX

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• In this era of the global village, the tide of democracy is running. And it will not cease, not in China, not in South Africa, not in any corner of this earth, where the simple idea of democracy and freedom has taken root.

  Paul Tsongas

  Running, Taken, Simple

  4 Copy quote

• What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy. What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals? The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Strong, War, Differences

  Non-Violence in Peace and War (1942) vol. 1, ch. 142

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is part of the moral tragedy with which we are dealing that words like 'democracy,' 'freedom,' 'rights,' 'justice,' which have so often inspired heroism and have led men to give their lives for things which make life worthwhile, can also become a trap, the means of destroying the very things men desire to uphold.

  Norman Angell

  War, Mean, Men

  7 Copy quote

• The view that we hold in Iraq now is this - that democracy is associated with elections. I believe that elections are possible.

  Ahmed Chalabi

  Believe, Views, Iraq

  7 Copy quote

• I have made a film about jazz that tries to look through jazz to see what it tells us about who we are as a people. I think that jazz is a spectacularly accurate model of democracy and a kind of look into our redemptive future possibilities.

  Ken Burns

  Thinking, People, Trying

  7 Copy quote

• I'd like to teach Iraq about Democracy because we're so experienced with it. First they should know that after 100 years they should free their slaves. Then after 150 years they should give their women the right to vote. Oh, and of course when they start it all they should begin with some genocide and ethnic cleansing.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Life, Years, Iraq

  6 Copy quote

• Our Creator has put in us hungers that this earth can- not satisfy. We cannot be completely self-contained on earth. Physical sense cannot give us a full life, nor can knowledge alone. No life is full unless it is linked to some- thing that goes on after we are dead.... If we have nothing more to live for than just to get ahead in a competitive system, then democracy will go down before other philosophies.

  Ralph Washington Sockman

  Life, Philosophy, Knowledge

  8 Copy quote

• When you fight, you don't fight for abstract values like the flag, or the nation, or democracy. You fight for your buddy. You fight to keep him alive, and he fights to keep you alive, and you go on that way, day after day, battle after battle. And when one of your buddies dies, something inside you dies as well. But you go on. You fight, so that his death isn't meaningless, his sacrifice isn't for nothing.

  Richard Marcinko

  Death, Sacrifice, Fighting

  Richard Marcinko (2010). “Red Cell”, p.323, Simon and Schuster

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it's your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.

  June Jordan

  History, African American, Soul

  June Jordan (1981). “Civil Wars”, Beacon Pr

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• I will not take 'but' for an answer. Negroes have been looking at democracy's 'but' too long.

  Langston Hughes

  Long, Black History, Answers

  Langston Hughes (2002). “The Early Simple Stories”, University of Missouri

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you live in a democracy and don't have freedom of information, it's not a democracy. And people have to understand that if you don't have freedom of information online, it's not going to be offline, either.

  Birgitta Jonsdottir

  People, Information, Online

  14 Copy quote

• Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority.

  James Bovard

  Taken, Two, Lunch

  6 Copy quote

• Global markets must be balanced by global values such as respect for human rights and international law, democracy, security and sustainable economic and environmental development.

  Anna Lindh

  Rights, Law, Environmental

  54 Copy quote

• Public opinion is presumptively an input to policy formation in a democracy because politicians respond to it or at least are believed to respond [to it].

  Alan Blinder

  Public Opinion, Input, Politician

  4 Copy quote

• We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

  Paddy Chayefsky

  College, America, World

  15 Copy quote

• My heart beats red, white, and blue.
  And with patriotism it aches
  Generally, I believe in democracy, freedom and civil rights
  But in particular, cupcakes

  John Walter Bratton

  Believe, 4th Of July, Heart

  4 Copy quote

• In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final healthcare bill will be very close. I take this vote with the utmost seriousness. I am quite aware of the historic fight that has lasted the better part of the last century to bring America in line with other modern democracies in providing single payer health care.

  Dennis Kucinich

  Fighting, Past, America

  7 Copy quote