Democratic Quotes - Page 33

• Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Taxation, Body, Coercion

  Geoff Mulgan (2006). “Good and Bad Power: The Ideals and Betrayals of Government”

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• In every capitalist economy there are anti-capitalist movements, activists, and even political parties; in a way, that there are no longer anti-democratic movements, activists, and parties.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Party, Capitalist Economy, Political

  Geoff Mulgan (2015). “The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future”, p.4, Princeton University Press

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• In 2008, I was one of the young feminist whippersnappers who voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries - or as many of my older counterparts called me at the time, a traitor.

  Jessica Valenti

  Feminist, Clinton, Traitor

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• When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more.

  C. S. Lewis

  Dream, Memories, Real

  C.S. Lewis (2005). “A Preface to Paradise Lost”, p.130, Atlantic Publishers & Dist

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• In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Military, Farewell, Government

  Farewell radio and television address to the American people, 17 Jan. 1961

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• Art never responds to the wish to make it democratic; it is not for everybody; it is only for those who are willing to undergo the effort needed to understand it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Art, Creativity, Effort

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.189, Macmillan

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• A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.

  Doris Lessing

  Book, Writing, Thinking

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• Whether they be young in spirit, or young in age, the members of the Democratic Party must never lose that youthful zest for new ideas and for a better world, which has made us great.

  John F. Kennedy

  Party, Zest, Ideas

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• It is above all in the present democratic age that the true friends of liberty and human grandeur must remain constantly vigilant and ready to prevent the social power from lightly sacrificing the particular rights of a few individuals to the general execution of its designs. In such times there is no citizen so obscure that it is not very dangerous to allow him to be oppressed, and there are no individual rights so unimportant that they can be sacrificed to arbitrariness with impunity.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  True Friend, Sacrifice, Rights

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• Bolivia is a striking example. The mostly white, Europeanized elite, which is a minority, happens to be sitting on most of the hydrocarbon reserves. For the first time Bolivia is becoming democratic. So it's therefore bitterly hated by the West, which despises democracy, because it's much too dangerous.

  Noam Chomsky

  White, Democracy, Example

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• There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democratic. Everybody shits.

  Margaret Atwood

  Toilets, Reassuring, Bodily Functions

  "The Handmaid's Tale". Book by Margaret Atwood, 1985.

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• The Democratic Party supports criminals and Islamic terrorists but has no sympathy for taxpayers.

  Ann Coulter

  Party, Islamic, Support

  Ann Coulter (2007). “If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans”, p.112, Crown Forum

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• Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors.

  Aldous Huxley

  Powerful, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Aldous Huxley, Robert S. Baker, James Sexton (2002). “Complete Essays: 1956-1963, and supplement, 1920-1948”, Ivan R. Dee Publisher

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• You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Thinking, Things In Life, Two

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• So, is there hope for a truly democratic Africa? Long answer: Only if continent-wide improvements in education, human rights and public health are coupled with an aggressive and far-sighted debt-relief program that breaks the cycle of subsistence farming and urban squalor. Short answer: No.

  Jon Stewart

  Rights, Long, Relief

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• To-day we live so cowed under the bombardment of this intellectual artillery that hardly anyone can attain to the inward detachment that is required for a clear view of the monstrous drama. The will-to-power operating under a pure democratic disguise has finished off its masterpiece so well that the object's sense of freedom is actually flattered by the most thorough-going enslavement that has ever existed.

  Oswald Spengler

  Drama, Views, Media

  "The Decline of the West (Volume II)". Book by Oswald Spengler, 1928.

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• No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.

  William L. Shirer

  Party, Responsibility, Errors

  William L. Shirer, Ron Rosenbaum (2011). “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany”, p.185, Simon and Schuster

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• A good novel is one that shows the complexity of individuals, and creates enough space for all these characters to have a voice; in this way a novel is called democratic - not that it advocates democracy but that by nature it is so. Empathy lies at the heart of Gatsby, like so many other great novels - the biggest sin is to be blind to others' problems and pains. Not seeing them means denying their existence.

  Azar Nafisi

  Pain, Lying, Heart

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.132, Random House

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• The Marxians love of democratic institutions was a stratagem only, a pious fraud for the deception of the masses. Within a socialist community there is no room left for freedom.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Community, Deception, Rooms

  Ludwig Von Mises (1985). “Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War”, Libertarian Press

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• The widespread abuse of prisoners is a virtually foolproof indication that politicians are trying to impose a system--whether political, religious or economic--that is rejected by large numbers of the people they are ruling. Just as ecologists define ecosystems by the presence of certain "indicator species" of plants and birds, torture is an indicator species of a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project, even if that regime happens to have come to power through elections.

  Naomi Klein

  Religious, Numbers, Ecosystems

  Naomi Klein (2010). “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”, p.156, Macmillan

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• The story of terrorism is written by the state and it is therefore highly instructive… compared with terrorism, everything else must be acceptable, or in any case more rational and democratic.

  Guy Debord

  Stories, Terrorism, States

  Guy Debord (1998). “Comments on the Society of the Spectacle”, p.24, Verso

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• Is it a democratic society that condemns people to the accident of conception? What are we-monkeys? If you expect people to be responsible for their children, you have to give them the right to choose whether or not to have children. What are you people thinking of? You're not only crazy! You're ogres!

  John Irving

  Thinking Of You, Children, Crazy

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• No emergency was ever dealt with effectively by democratic process.

  Ian Mcewan

  Emergencies, Process, Democratic Process

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• The Republican and Democratic parties both feed out of the same bag provided by the monied system, and where the list frequently differs the same interests are represented.

  George Seldes

  Party, Bags, Lists

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• It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Dark, Support, Democracy

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