Russian President Vladimir Putin’s traditionalist-nationalist rhetoric, which blames secularism, diversity and internationalism for the weakening of Western democracies, gives voice to the grievances that American hate groups have felt for so long.
There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.
I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‘Democracy in America’ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.
Democracy divides people into workers and loafers. It makes no provision for those who have no time to work.
People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. The price of democracy is the ongoing pursuit of the common good by all of the people.
In any country, governance issues are there. Challenges are there, pressures are there. When multi-party coalitions take decisions, sometimes delays will be there. But that is what democracy is: it is beauty or it’s challenge.
It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Customs, traditions, laws should be flexible, within good reason, if that is what it takes to make our democracy work.
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
Democracy without morality is impossible.
The theory of relativity worked out by Mr. Einstein, which is in the domain of natural science, I believe can also be applied to the political field. Both democracy and human rights are relative concepts – and not absolute and general.
Whatever they did for democracy, the U.S. interventions in the Middle East and the vaunted Arab Spring have proved to be pure hell for Arab Christians.
From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.
We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.
The world has come around to the view that democracy is essential for full human development. And only education and skill development can make this possible.
The president who achieved a true democracy. The president who built a peaceful relationship between the North and the South. The president who achieved a more equal and fair economy. That’s how I want to be remembered.
I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid.
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Pakistan’s future viability, stability and security lie in empowering its people and building political institutions. My goal is to prove that the fundamental battle for the hearts and minds of a generation can be accomplished only under democracy.
The grandeur and strength or our people and democracy are as big as a forest.
There is a severe shortage in our country of political parties where internal democracy is alive and kicking.
Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.
But foremost, I do not subscribe to the view that Islamic culture and democracy cannot be reconciled.
The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty.
Freedom of expression – in particular, freedom of the press – guarantees popular participation in the decisions and actions of government, and popular participation is the essence of our democracy.
The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It’s a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy.
The power the fossil fuel industry exerts over Congress is polluting American democracy, the propaganda it emits through its front groups is polluting our public discourse, and, of course, its carbon emissions are polluting our atmosphere and oceans – it’s a triple whammy and a disgrace.
Those who abhors democracy would rarely immigrate to an authoritarian state if they have to.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy. The problem comes when healthy criticism is replaced with more destructive intimidation and sanctions.
Aristotle might not recognize it, or others who are at the root of democracy. What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?
On a Chinese film you just give orders, no one questions you. Here, you have to convince people, you have to tell them why you want to do it a certain way, and they argue with you. Democracy.
India is a democracy; it is in our DNA.
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
The media is absolutely essential to the functioning of a democracy. It’s not our job to cozy up to power. We’re supposed to be the check and balance on government.
When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he’s referring to.
Newspapers write ringing editorials declaring that this is and always was a democracy.
American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the poorest and most ignorant part of the society.
We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
The Supreme Court of the United States is too important to our democracy for it to be understaffed for partisan reasons.
And when we draw lines in the sand with regard to certain basic things that are vital to our interest and to the interest of democracy and our friends around the world, we have to be willing to back that up.
The only way to save the world is through socialism, but a socialism that exists within a democracy; there’s no dictatorship here.
A democracy thrives on diversity. Tyranny oppresses it.
All we want is to carry out the greatest expression of a free democracy and vote on Catalonia’s future. This is not about independence: it is about fundamental civil rights and the universal right of self-determination.
If we vote to Leave and take back control, all sorts of opportunities open up. Including doing new free trade deals around the world, restoring Britain’s seat on all sorts of international bodies, restoring health to our democracy and belief to our democracy.
Jordan has to show the Arab world that there’s another way of doing things. We’re a monarchy, yes, but if we can show democracy that leads to a two-, three-, four-party system – left, right and center – in a couple of years’ time, then the Muslim Brotherhood will no longer be something to contend with.
I think clearly the United States, as well as other western nations, should stand by their commitments to human rights and democracy and should try to influence other countries to move in that direction.
This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we’re not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there.
We will not put a lid on opinions. On the contrary, it is more important than ever that political debates are open and free, even on the most difficult issues. Especially on the most difficult issues. The task is to encourage controversial debates in a form that strengthens democracy.
The American people need to know the truth. The American people need to see the truth. In a democracy, letting the people know the truth is the essence of what it means to be free.
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.
There is a danger in democracy itself.
People have the right to protest – that’s what democracy is all about. I have no problem with people exercising their democratic rights.
Let’s win the peace and democracy the good people of Iraq so richly deserve after decades of tyranny.
The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror – real or fake, provoked or accidental – can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.
We want a free market, but we know that the paradox of a ‘free’ market is that sometimes you have to intervene. You have to make sure it’s not the law of the jungle but the laws of democracy that works.
