quotations about democracy
When threatened, the first thing a democracy gives up is democracy.
MIGNON MCLAUGHLIN
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook
We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force. In the past, it has been movements for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to flourishing democracies; movements that continue today. This doesn’t mean abandoning our values and ideals; wherever we can, it’s in our interest to help foster democracy through the diplomatic and economic resources at our disposal. But even as we provide such help, we should be clear that the institutions of democracy – free markets, a free press, a strong civil society – cannot be built overnight, and they cannot be built at the end of a barrel of a gun. And so we must realize that the freedoms FDR once spoke of – especially freedom from want and freedom from fear – do not just come from deposing a tyrant and handing out ballots; they are only realized once the personal and material security of a people is ensured as well.
BARACK OBAMA
speech, Nov. 20, 2006
It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
TOM STOPPARD
Jumpers
Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Good Society
Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation.
FAREED ZAKARIA
The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Social Contract
Kiss the ladies, shake hands with the fellows
And it's open for business like a cheap bordello
And they call it democracy
BRUCE COCKBURN
"Call It Democracy", World of Wonders
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks
Is this what you call democracy?
They're killing us, and you're killing me
ADOLESCENTS
"Democracy"
Democracy works when people claim it as their own.
BILL MOYERS
The Nation, Jan. 22, 2007
In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king--but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true?
SLAVOJ ZIZEK
First as Tragedy
A democracy will never, save after an awful catastrophe, return what has once been conceded to it, for to do so would be to admit an inferiority in itself, of which, except by some almost unbearable misfortune, it could never be convinced.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
A great democracy does not make it harder to vote than to buy an assault weapon.
BILL CLINTON
speech at the Lincoln Memorial on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, Aug. 28, 2013
The generation you consult will be more democratic and better instructed than our own; for the progress of democracy, though not constant, is certain, and the progress of knowledge is both constant and certain.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, December 14, 1880