Democracy Quotes

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• The thing about democracy, beloveds, is that it is not neat, orderly, or quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion.

  Molly Ivins

  Topics in Confusion, Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Order

• Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.

  Jane Elizabeth Auer

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Problem Solving

• Abraham Lincoln did not go to Gettysburg having commissioned a poll to find out what would sell in Gettysburg. There were no people with percentages for him, cautioning him about this group or that group or what they found in exit polls a year earlier. When will we have the courage of Lincoln?

  Robert Coles

  Topics in Compromise, Confidence, Democracy, Leadership, Politics

  Tags in Government, Integrity/Individuality, Character, Judgment, Conscience, Courage, Choice, Choosing

• The citizen can bring our political and governmental institutions back to life, make them responsive and accountable, and keep them honest. No one else can.

  John Gardner

  Topics in Democracy, Honesty, Politics

  Tags in Government

• A good politician under democracy is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

  H. L. Mencken

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Politicians

• The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.

  Edward Dowling

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

• The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the party that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

  John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Elections

• Elections are a good deal like marriages. There’s no accounting for anyone’s taste. Every time we see a bridegroom we wonder why she ever picked him, and it’s the same with public officials.

  Will Rogers

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Elections, Marriage

• Citizenship is what makes a republic — monarchies can get along without it.

  Mark Twain

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

• Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.

  Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Hypocrisy

• Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it’s not something that happens just with one event. It’s an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.

  Jim Hightower

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Elections

• Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

  Robert Byrne

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Elections, Vote

• I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Topics in Democracy, Power

  Tags in Government

• Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

  Barry Goldwater

  Topics in Democracy, Power

  Tags in Government

• It seems to me that whereas power usually means power-over, the power of some person or group over some other person or group, it is possible to develop the conception of power-with, a jointly developed power, a co-active, not a coercive power.

  Mary Parker Follett

  Topics in Democracy, Power

• When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Topics in Democracy

  Tags in Majorities, Radicals, Minorities

• 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 M. Hutchins

  Topics in Democracy, Politics

  Tags in Apathy, Indifference, Rebellion

• Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

  E. B. White

  Topics in Democracy, Religion

  Tags in Faith

• Creative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.

  Unknown

  Topics in Democracy

  Tags in Responsibility, Freedom, Creativity

• 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

  Topics in Democracy, Opportunity, Respect

  Tags in Equality