Democracy Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

I know that many of my supporters are disappointed. I am too. But our disappointment must be overcome by our love of country.
And I say to our fellow members of the world community, let no one see this contest as a sign of American weakness. The strength of American democracy is shown most clearly through the difficulties it can overcome.

There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.

Muammar Gaddafi

Every profession has an ideology and a drive for power that goes far beyond its achievements and it is the task of democracy to keep this ideology and this drive under control. Science is here no different from other institutions.

Paul Feyerabend

Good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great.

Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

The conclusion, so vexatious to democracy, that wisdom and not popularity qualifies for rule may be forced upon us by the peril in atomic energy.

In Romania, particularly since the war, democracy has created for us, through this system of elections, a "national elite" of Romano-Jews, based not on bravery, nor love of country, nor sacrifice, but on betrayal of country, the satisfaction of personal interest, the bribe, the traffic of influence, the enrichment through exploitation and embezzlement, thievery, cowardice, and intrigue to knock down any adversary. This "national elite," if it continues to lead this country, will bring about the destruction of the Romanian state.

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

We have to ensure that it is structured organically, so that it functions like a person functions internally, like the organs function... First in the examination of the matter. Secondly in that one develops a concept of.... a social order that have never existed before. That simply means: to realize freedom, democracy and socialism – free democratic socialism.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

The statement that says there must be a second term (for President Benigno Aquino III) to save democracy is pure bullshit.

Rodrigo Duterte

They were not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, they were absent in the Constitution and they were invisible in the new political democracy. They were the women of early America.

Democracy in the contemporary world demands, among other things, an educated and informed people.

Elizabeth Bishop

Democracy, like any noncoercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits.

Equal Rights and Responsibilities is a basic idea that would have very important psychological effects on women and men from the time they are born. It could very much change the girl child's idea of her place in the world... It seems to me very important to the idea of true democracy – to my country – and to the world eventually – that all men and women stand equal under the sky – I wish that you could be with us in this fight..

Georgia O'Keeffe

Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal.... The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country.

Democracy is always, by nature and constitution, the triumph of mediocrity.

Indro Montanelli

Where my Guards appear, there is no room for democracy.

The conventional model for explaining the uniqueness of American democracy is its division between executive, legislative, and judicial functions. It was the great contribution of Frank J. Goodnow to codify a less obvious, but no less profound element: the distinction between politics and policies, principles and operations. He showed how the United States went beyond a nation based on government by gentlemen and then one based on the spoils system brought about by the Jacksonian revolt against the Eastern Establishment, into a government that separated political officials from civil administrators.

Frank Johnson Goodnow

Aspiring dictators sometimes win elections, and elected leaders sometimes govern badly and threaten their neighbors. … History demonstrates that democracy usually follows good governance, not the reverse.

Most of the poverty and misery in the world is due to bad government, lack of democracy, weak states, internal strife, and so on. We do need to intervene, to improve political and economic conditions inside countries that have bad governments, where people are suffering.
One way of doing this, without violating sovereignty, is through constructive actions — reinforcements and incentives for countries that are moving in the right direction, toward an open society, a market economy, et cetera. That is what I'm advocating. I'm advocating preventive action of a constructive nature. And I would use military force only as the very last resort, when nothing else works.

In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism.

Freedom of thought,…freedom of thought is essential to human progress. If we stop freedom of thought, we stop progress in our world. Because of this it is so important that we teach our children, our young people, the importance of freedom of thought. Freedom of thought begins with the right to ask questions. And this right our people in Burma have not had for so long that some of our young people do not quite know how to ask questions. One of the tasks we have set ourselves, in my party, the National League for Democracy is to teach our people to ask questions, not to accept everything that is done to them without asking why.

Aung San Suu Kyi

The newspaper is in all its literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.

Walter Lippmann

The rise of democracy was driven by the citizens' desire to escape from the paternalistic and arbitrary charity of those with money. They accomplished this by replacing charity with a fair, balanced, arm's-length system of public obligation. The principle tool of that obligation was taxation.

John Ralston Saul

Iggy. This is not a democracy," I said,(...)"It's a Maxocracy.

James Patterson