Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.
It’s not the voting that’s democracy; it’s the counting.
I am not Left or Right. I believe in nationalism, patriotism, the federal structure, democracy, and the poor.
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.
We can make black lives matter in the labor movement by building the kinds of movements that black women need to shape a new economy and a new democracy that don’t force them to choose between making a living and being a part of a healthy democracy.
People favouring their relatives more than an outsider is what the biggest fight in democracy is, let it be in film industry or politics.
My Democratic friends just can’t accept the fact that the American people chose Donald Trump to be president – it’s called democracy. My advice to them, and I say this gently: Fill out a ‘Hurt Feelings Report’ and let’s move on.
I pray that this council, which will probably be too late to save Iraq, will do what it can, which will be immeasurably strong in what it does in trying to save our democracy.
The exuberance of democracy leads to undisciplined and disorderly conditions which are inimical to development.
You have to understand that to have a revolution when you are 18 years old is completely different from normal political leaders who were born in a democracy and will die in a democracy and never to have experienced that change. I have seen that change.
The purpose cannot be creating self-styled democracies, but rather encouraging steps that are conducive to establishing democratic rule at universal standards. Obviously, this would be a formidable journey.
If we want to preserve the foundation of our democracy, it’s vital that we find common ground that allows us to work for the greater good of this nation. This does not mean giving up our values. This does not mean swallowing a bitter compromise.
I noticed that democracy was broken and tried to work on fixing that in Japan. Then I realized that it was broken all over the place and decided to work on that too.
The state must protect the media. In a democracy, the role of media is very important. In the absence of a credible opposition party, you can rely on the media.
When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders – to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us.
Democracy in a socialist country is freedom in chains.
It means that, in fact, it’s – whether fascist is the right word I don’t know – more of a plutocracy than anything resembling a democracy; it has become a nation controlled by a very small, very wealthy elite.
The Western world, the free world, loses what it cherishes most, and that is freedom and liberty we’ve seen for a couple of hundred years in this grand experiment that we call democracy.
Democracy still has a real hope and chance in Iraq, and true freedom in this country would be the greatest testament to those who gave their lives for it.
I used to work for an NGO called Transitions Online, and I was their Director of New Media. I was a very idealistic fellow who thought that he could use blogs, social networks and new media to help promote democracy, human rights and freedom of expression.
A people inspired by democracy, human rights and economic opportunity will turn their back decisively against extremism.
Democracy must be internally generated. You cannot force it from the top – it’s not going to work.
A basic tenet of a healthy democracy is open dialogue and transparency.
We have to implant democracies where there are now dictatorships.
Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.
There will always be a place for us somewhere, somehow, as long as we see to it that working people fight for everything they have, everything they hope to get, for dignity, equality, democracy, to oppose war and to bring to the world a better life.
Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we’re trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn’t.
The transition from dictatorship to democracy is always very difficult, and if you read a history of any country that went through this, it wasn’t easy. And, you know, you don’t end dictatorship one day and next day you have fully fledged democracy.
It is never smart, even in a strong democracy, to declare some debate off limits. In a weakening democracy it is catastrophic.
Fighting public corruption is essential to preserving a working democracy that people have confidence in. I said that time and again on the campaign trail, and that’s why it’s such a high priority for me.
If you want to rip the heart out of a democracy, you go after the facts. That’s what modern authoritarians do. You lie. All the time. Then, you say it’s your opponents and the journalists who lie.
Because of my parents’ love of democracy, we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia – first by Hitler and then by Stalin.
We discussed the history of postwar Japan and how Japan had missed an opportunity to build a more functional democracy because of the focus on fighting communism driven in large part by the American occupation.
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
In the early 2000s, people expected that anonymity on the Internet would be positive for the development of democracy in South Korea. In a Confucian culture like South Korea’s, hierarchy can block the free exchange of opinions in face-to-face situations. The web offered a way around that.
My own students say they don’t trust anyone who voted for Trump. How can you have a democracy with that?
You may debate whether the Disney heroines fit the feminist standard, but they don’t live in a democracy. Remember, they’re princesses.
I’d like people to be educated on the voting machines, making sure that our democracy isn’t being hijacked by computer technology. There’s no reason there can’t be a paper trail on those machines.
I’m tired of this discussion of capitalism and socialism; we live in the 21st century, we need an economic system that has democracy as its underpinnings and an ethical code.
I don’t understand why it has to be either – or – either socialism or democracy. Why can’t we combine things to get the best of each system?
In brief, Western democracy, as other political models, is not exportable to all regions of the world.
Democracy is not just an election, it is our daily life.
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.
From a constitutional point of view there is an advantage to democracy and it must be balanced and the Supreme Court should be given another constitutional tool that will also give power to Judaism.
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
Many people don’t understand how disciplined you have to be to play jazz… And that is really the idea of democracy – freedom within the Constitution or discipline. You don’t just get out there and do anything you want.
One of the most interesting reactions to come out of 1968 was in the first publication of the Trilateral Commission, which believed there was a ‘crisis of democracy’ from too much participation of the masses.
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.
American democracy has two faces.
Democracy makes us articulate our views, defend them, and refine them.
We desire and thirst for freedom, democracy and the rule of law just like anyone else. And we are prepared to fight tooth and nail for all of those things.
I wanted to do comedy because I left Malaysia and went to America. I got bitten by the Western, idealist, opinionated, democracy bug.
In democracy, every election is a learning process. You learn from every election, the one that you win and the one that you lose. And then you prepare for the next one.
It is not inevitable that the Internet will evolve in a manner compatible with democracy.
In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. The only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. And color, merely something to distinguish one team’s uniform from another’s.
Sometimes it’s better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.
The way people in democracies think of the government as something different from themselves is a real handicap. And, of course, sometimes the government confirms their opinion.
