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Democracy Quotes
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All forms of the state have democracy for their truth, and for that reason are false to the extent that they are not democracy
Karl Marx
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Chairman Mao once said that political power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was only partly right: power that comes from the barrel of a gun can be effective only for a short time. In the end, peoples love for truth, justice, freedom, and democracy will triumph. No matter what governments do, the human spirit will always prevail.
Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama
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I've said this before — when human rights are denied and citizens have no opportunity to redress their grievances peacefully, it feeds terrorist propaganda that justifies violence. Likewise, when political opponents are treated like terrorists and thrown in jail, it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. So the real path to lasting stability and progress is not less democracy; I believe it is more democracy in terms of free speech, and freedom of religion, rule of law, strong civil societies. All that has to play a part in countering violent extremism.
Barack Obama
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In the days of democracy there is no such thing as active loyalty to a person. You are, therefore, loyal or disloyal to institutions.
Mahatma Gandhi
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Democracy is a great institution and, therefore, it is liable to be greatly abused.
Mahatma Gandhi
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And this is something that I emphasize wherever I go — democracy does not stop on Election Day. For a real democracy to work, and for a society to thrive and continually improve, it requires that people continue to participate. And there have to be laws in place to protect that space and facilitate people's ability to participate.
Barack Obama
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The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Our political experiment of democracy, the last refuge of cheap misgovernment.
George Bernard Shaw
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In a democracy it is necessary that people should learn to endure having their sentiments outraged...
Bertrand Russell
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Education in democracy must be carried on within the Party so that members can understand the meaning of democratic life, the meaning of the relationship between democracy and centralism, and the way in which democratic centralism should be put into practice. Only in this way can we really extend democracy within the Party and at the same time avoid ultra-democracy and the laissez-faire that destroys discipline.
Mao Zedong
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Democracy is not something that is static; it's something that we constantly have to work on. [...]democracy is a little messier than alternative systems of government, but that's because democracy allows everybody to have a voice. And that system of government lasts, and it's legitimate, and when agreements are finally struck, you know that nobody is being left out of the conversation. And that's the reason for our stability and our prosperity.
Barack Obama
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A respect for the rights of other peoples to determine their forms of government and their economy will not weaken our democracy. It will inevitably strengthen it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
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The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another.
George Orwell
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Good and just society is neither the thesis of capitalism nor the antithesis of communism, but a socially conscious democracy which reconciles the truths of individualism and collectivism.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
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No, Democracy is not identical with majority rule. Democracy is a State which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of force by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.
Vladimir Lenin
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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
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In response to a question about drone strikes:
I'm sure that the new Yemen, the civilized Yemen and the democratic Yemen, it will be a Yemen without terrorism, without extremism. And we know that we're going to be the deepest path for democracy and for peace and international security.
Tawakkol Karman
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The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim, because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending.
Lewis H. Morgan
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The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.
Saul Alinsky
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Labor is marching toward the goal of industrial democracy and contributing constructively toward a more rational arrangement of our domestic economy.
John L. Lewis
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A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over.
Earl Warren
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The newspaper is in all its literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.
Walter Lippmann
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No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
Walter Lippmann
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Earth Democracy connects people in circles of care, cooperation, and compassion instead of dividing them through competition and conflict, fear and hatred.
Vandana Shiva
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A certain secret jealousy of the British Minister is always lurking in the breast of every American Senator, if he is truly democratic; for democracy, rightly understood, is the government of the people, by the people, for the benefit of Senators, and there is always a danger that the British Minister may not understand this political principle as he should.
Henry Adams
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Quote of the day
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
Robert F. Kennedy
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