Democracy - Quotes

A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. - Fisher Ames

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. - Thomas Jefferson

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb. - Emil Cioran

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. - James Madison

All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them. - Jane Addams

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy. - Bill Moyers

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. - Isaac Asimov

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. - Abraham Lincoln

As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences. - Eugene McCarthy

Democracy and so-called human rights are only a window dressing designed to keep the naked facts hidden under a cloak of false decency. - Paula Horan

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear. - Alan Coren

Democracy depends on citizens being informed, and since our media, especially television (which is the most important source of news for most Americans) reports mostly what the people in power do, and repeats what the people in power say, the public is badly informed, and it means we cannot really say we have a functioning democracy. - Howard Zinn

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity. - Irving Kristol

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. - James Russell Lowell

Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends. - James Vial Blake

Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. - Plato

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. - George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a double edge sword. - Roger Anderson

Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. - Vladimir Lenin

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. - H. L. Mencken

Democracy is a system that gives people a chance to elect rascals of their own choice. - Doug Larson

Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. - Saul Alinsky

Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation. - Fareed Zakaria

Democracy is hypocrisy without limitation. - Iskander Mirza

Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles. - Abbie Hoffman

Democracy is popular because of the illusion of choice and participation it provides, but when you live in a society in which most people’s knowledge of the world extends as far as sports, sitcoms, reality shows, and celebrity gossip, democracy becomes a very dangerous idea. Until people are properly educated and informed, instead of indoctrinated to be ignorant mindless consumers, democracy is nothing more than a clever tool used by the ruling class to subjugate the rest of us. - Gavin Nascimento

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. - H. L. Mencken

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be. - Sydney J. Harris

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. - E. B. White

Democracy is the road to socialism. - Karl Marx

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! - Benjamin Franklin

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. - Aristotle

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. - Clement Atlee

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. - Oscar Wilde

Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation. - Atifete Jahjaga

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. - James Bovard

Democracy works when people claim it as their own. - Bill Moyers

Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not "given", it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice. - Aung San Suu Kyi

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. - John Adams

Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents. - Robert A. Heinlein

Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Democrats are children of the Enlightenment. They believe in the perfectibility of humanity. They revere systems even more than they do results. - Paul Begala

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. - Plato

Does this mean that I am an opponent of democracy? Not at all. Fiction for fiction, it is the least harmful. But it is well not to confound its promises with realities. The fiction consists in the postulate of all democratic government, that the great majority of the electors in a state are enlightened, free, honest, and patriotic--whereas such a postulate is a mere chimera. The majority in any state is necessarily composed of the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least capable; the state is therefore at the mercy of accident and passion, and it always ends by succumbing at one time or another to the rash conditions which have been made for its existence. A man who condemns himself to live upon the tight-rope must inevitably fall; one has no need to be a prophet to foresee such a result. - Henri-Frederic Amiel

Everybody’s for democracy in principle. It’s only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections. - Meg Greenfield

I have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct – to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way discomfited by it. - James Russell Lowell

If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave. - Jane Addams 

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. - Aristotle

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. - Aristotle

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed. - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end. - Bayard Rustin

In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king – but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true? - Slavoj Zizek

Modern democracies will face difficult new challenges –ighting terrorism, adjusting to globalization, adapting to an aging society – and they will have to make their system work much better than it currently does. That means making democratic decision-making effective, reintegrating constitutional liberalism into the practice of democracy, rebuilding broken political institutions and civic associations. Perhaps most difficult of all, it requires that those with immense power in our societies embrace their responsibilities, lead, and set standards that are not only legal, but moral. Without this inner stuffing, democracy will become an empty shell, not simply inadequate but potentially dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life. - Fareed Zakaria

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. - Will Rogers

Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. - Helen Keller

Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. - John Adams

The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. - Edward Abbey

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment. - Robert Hutchins

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. - Thomas Jefferson

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become. - Anna Garlin Spencer

The highest measure of democracy is neither the ‘extent of freedom’ nor the ‘extent of equality’, but rather the highest measure of participation. - A. d. Benoist

The idea of representative democracy will change. Today, we claim we don't use direct democracy because it would be impractical to poll everybody on every issue. The truth is that we use representative democracy because we want to get an above-average group to think through problems and make choices that, in the short term, might not be obvious – even if they are to everybody's benefit over the long term. - Bill Gates

The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity. - Ambrose Bierce

The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose. - Barack Obama

The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be. - Edwin H. Land

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. - Gustave Flaubert

To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy. - Aung San Suu Kyi

We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force. In the past, it has been movements for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to flourishing democracies; movements that continue today. This doesn’t mean abandoning our values and ideals; wherever we can, it’s in our interest to help foster democracy through the diplomatic and economic resources at our disposal. But even as we provide such help, we should be clear that the institutions of democracy – free markets, a free press, a strong civil society – cannot be built overnight, and they cannot be built at the end of a barrel of a gun. And so we must realize that the freedoms FDR once spoke of – especially freedom from want and freedom from fear – do not just come from deposing a tyrant and handing out ballots; they are only realized once the personal and material security of a people is ensured as well. - Barack Obama

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy? - Mahatma Gandhi

What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority. - Walter Lippmann

You've got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a humourist to stay one. - Will Rogers