I’m going to try and make people realize that in order to live the life they are living, they need to have democracy, and it’s being threatened.
The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.
To balance China, the democracies will need new friends – and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.
Everything has to be done to build some sort of international democracy. We’ve seen only the tiniest beginnings of that.
The Bill of Rights is a remarkable document because it weaves into the fabric of our democracy the idea that government has a responsibility to protect individual liberty.
The motive power of democracy is love.
I think it’s the height of patriotism to continue to exercise your right as a citizen and to hold your government to account. Isn’t that what the very essence of democracy is about?
I probably will not live to see Turkey become an exemplary democracy, but I pray that the downward authoritarian drift can be stopped before it is too late.
Voting is completely important. People in America think democracy is a given. I think of it as an ecosystem, and what gets in the way of it is politicians and apathy.
The exercise of democracy begins as exercise, as walking around, becoming familiar with the streets, comfortable with strangers, able to imagine your own body as powerful and expressive rather than a pawn.
I don’t have any formula for ousting a dictator or building democracy. All I can suggest is to forget about yourself and just think of your people. It’s always the people who make things happen.
Television is the most perfect democracy. You sit there with your remote control and vote.
Our country’s founders cherished liberty, not democracy.
Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation. And it is the fondest hope of all Americans that we can help bring democracy to every corner of the world.
Democracy is messy, and it’s hard. It’s never easy.
We can’t equate democracy with Christianity because the largest democracy on earth is India, which is primarily Hindu. The third largest democracy is Indonesia, which is Islamic. Democracy and freedom are not dependent on Christian beliefs.
More socialism means more democracy, openness and collectivism in everyday life.
I’m in favour of more democracy – let the British public decide what the future of the monarchy is and what shape it should be.
Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.
Ukraine is a vital link for Europe: our energy transportation networks; our location between the European Union and Eurasia. We’re the melting pot of Catholicism and Orthodox Christianity. The democracy we founded with the Orange Revolution has to be an example for other post-Soviet states.
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
The two most important things that can be done to promote democracy in the world is first, to bring moral clarity back to world affairs and second, to link international policies to the advance of democracy around the globe.
Women in most countries have not achieved much, because they can’t be liberated under the patriarchal, capitalist, imperialist and military system that determines the way we live now, and which is governed by power, not justice, by false democracy, not real freedom.
Let me reassure that the Kingdom of Cambodia a country with independence, neutrality, peace, freedom, democracy and human rights as you all have seen, shall be existing with no end.
We have a war dictator who was not elected, he snuck in. so he punishes people that threaten him in any way, or even say something he doesn’t like. It has no resemblance to democracy.
Even in an enlightened democracy, the media have to check themselves to make sure they are not contributing to an unnecessary mass hysteria.
Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.
If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: ‘Thou shalt not ration justice.’
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
How do we get democracy at the international level? That’s our problem. and it’s essentially the same problem people faced in the 18th Century when they tried to get democracy nationally. Now we need it internationally.
Democracy derailed is democracy denied.
It has been well over half a century and I’m glad to say we have taken the right path from authoritarianism to democracy and this is a road of no return.
There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
You can’t have an industrial revolution, you can’t have democracies, you can’t have populations who can govern themselves until you have literacy. The printing press simply unlocked literacy.
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
I will protect democracy with my life.
A band is not a democracy: It’s show business.
Democracy… is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
In a multi-party democracy, many issues which you want – or do not want – will be raised. It is for us to make it relevant or not so relevant with our answers.
Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.
I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.
Democracy is liberty – a liberty which does not infringe on the liberty nor encroach on the rights of others; a liberty which maintains strict discipline, and makes law its guarantee and the basis of its exercise. This alone is true liberty; this alone can produce true democracy.
I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.
I think we need more young people; we need to elect young people to government. We need to give them a chance, in the media, in politics, in democracy.
Those religions that are oppressive to women are also against democracy, human rights, and freedom of expression.
Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president.
Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in its veins.
Our way is straight and clear – the building up of a socialist democracy at home, with freedom and prosperity for all, and the maintenance of world peace and friendship with all nations abroad.
Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.
In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That’s bad news for everyone else – and for our democracy itself.
Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.
In history, the millions win; that is democracy.
Democracy is now going forth on a crusade against imperialism.
Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.
Political institutions are fair game in political debates in a democracy. Nothing is more fair game, in fact, than political matters of public concern.
The atomic weapons race and the secrecy surrounding it crushed American democracy. It induced us to conduct government according to lies. It distorted justice. It undermined American morality.
My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.
Everybody’s for democracy in principle. It’s only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.
The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy – the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities – which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.
In the Soviet Union, capitalism triumphed over communism. In this country, capitalism triumphed over democracy.
