Democracy Quotes

To the people who are upset about their hard-earned tax money going to things they don’t like: welcome to the f*cking club. Reimburse me for the Iraq war and oil subsidies, and diaphragms are on me!

~ Jon Stewart

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

~ Matt Taibbi

Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

~ Abraham Lincoln

Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

~ Ronald Reagan

There has always been, and there is now, a profound conflict of interest between the people and the government of the United States.

~ Howard Zinn

Democracy is not merely a form of Government. It is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience. It is essentially an attitude of respect and reverence towards our fellow men.

~ B.r. Ambedkar

The U.S. is a cosmetic democracy.

~ John Pilger

My definition of democracy is - A form and a method of Government whereby revolutionary changes in the social life are brought about without bloodshed. That is the real test. It is perhaps the severest test. But when you are judging the quality of the material you must put it to the severest test.

~ B.r. Ambedkar

Society will develop a new kind of servitude which covers the surface of society with a network of complicated rules, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate. It does not tyrannise but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

~ Alexis De Tocqueville

Representative government is artifice, a political myth, designed to conceal from the masses the dominance of a self-selected, self-perpetuating, and self-serving traditional ruling class.

~ Giuseppe Prezzolini

The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.

~ Gene Sharp

Vimes had once discussed the Ephebian idea of ‘democracy’ with Carrot, and had been rather interested in the idea that everyone had a vote until he found out that while he, Vimes, would have a vote, there was no way in the rules that anyone could prevent Nobby Nobbs from having one as well. Vimes could see the flaw there straight away.

~ Terry Pratchett

When a plutocracy is disguised as a democracy, the system is beyond corrupt.

~ Suzy Kassem

Better to live under one tyrant a thousand miles away, than a thousand tyrants one mile away.

~ Daniel Bliss

Perhaps the most important thing I learned was about democracy, that democracy is not our government, our constitution, our legal structure. Too often they are enemies of democracy.

~ Howard Zinn

When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that, in our democracy, government is us.

~ Barack Obama

There is an unnatural unfitness in an aristocracy to be legislators for a nation. Their ideas of distributive justice are corrupted at the very source. They begin life trampling on all their younger brothers and sisters, and relations of every kind, and are taught and educated so to do. With what ideas of justice or honor can that man enter a house of legislation, who absorbs in his own person the inheritance of a whole family of children, or metes out some pitiful portion with the insolence of a gift?

~ Thomas Paine

I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.

~ H.l. Mencken

My father once told me that American democracy is a people’s democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work.

~ George Takei

Ours was the first nation to be founded on the idea that all are created equal and all deserve equal treatment under the law. Despite our missteps and shortcomings, these ideals still inspire hope among the oppressed and give us pride in being Americans.

~ Jimmy Carter

Whether voting Republican or Democrat, the result is the same: A corrupt corporate government.

~ Steven Magee

Most fundamentally, the U.S. military is—and will continue to be—a product of our culture and our collective decisions. Whatever it is, it's what we have made it.

~ Rosa Brooks

Reigning doctrines are often called a double standard.The term is misleading.It is more accurate to describe them as a single standard,clear and unmistakable,the standard that Adam Smith called the vile maxim of the masters of mankind: ...All for ourselves,and nothing for other people. Much has changed since his day,but the vile maxim flourishes.

~ Noam Chomsky

Democracy is government by the people, for the people. Without the responsibility of the people, and without the involvement of the people - all you have left is GOVERNMENT.

~ Christina Engela

Who is an elected government in a constitutional democracy to decide it will not tolerate dissent.

~ Christina Engela

government is legitimate not so much because it represents the 'general will', but because its policies are, ideally and counterfactually, the result of the public deliberation of all who are concerned by the decision

~ Frédéric Vandenberghe

I am a hero! Are you? - Chris

~ Yanan Melo

Democracy is not a form of government. It is a tool of government. Case in point, Stalinist USSR was a democracy.

~ A.e. Samaan

Chris. What do you want, child?I sighed and walked another three steps forward. I stared into his eyes and spoke the one word that terrified him, Democracy.

~ Yanan Melo

I would like Britain - and indeed other countries - to be run in the interests of people's needs and aspirations, rather than on the basis of profit for a small elite; for democracy to be democratically managed by working people; for democracy to be extended as far as possible, including in the workplace and the economy.

~ Owen Jones

Democracy is the process to elect the Government of the Upper class or caste people, by the poor people and for the corporate people - Idiotneil

~ Neil Jain

In fact, caucus, a word derived from the Algonquin languages, better reflected the layers of talking circles and the goal of consensus that were at the heart of governance.

~ Gloria Steinem

Democracy is the process to elect government of the upper-class people, by the poor people and for the corporate people.

~ Nilesh (Neil) Jain

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

~ H.l. Mencken

We (libertarians) find just as many things to rip on the left as we do on the right. People on the far-left and the far-right are the same exact person to us.

~ Trey Parker

There are two methods, or means, and only two, whereby man's needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth produced by others; this is the political means.

~ Albert Jay Nock

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own. The harm done by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional do-gooders who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

~ Henry Grady Weaver

A man who doesn’t detest a bad government is a fool. And if there were such a thing as a good government in earth, it would be a great joy to serve it.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Governments represent their citizens in the same way as parasites represent their hosts.

~ Jakub Bożydar Wiśniewski