Democracy Quotes - Page 19

The surest way to lose democracy is to take it for granted. Every citizen must contribute to its advancement in some way. No nation or culture can long survive the absence of transcendent values and absolutes.

If American democracy is to remain the greatest hope of humanity, it must continue abundantly in the faith of the Bible

The best way to protect your own freedom is to watch everybody else's back. That's the essence of community.

There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration.

Democracy in many parts of the world is undergoing a very deep crisis. Politics is becoming a branch of the entertainment industry. People vote not for the best leader, but for the funniest candidate.

War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy.

Our Constitution is the envy of the world, as it should be for it is the grand design of the finest nation on earth.

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.

Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

Socialism is the completion of democracy, not the negation of it.

My objection to the death penalty is based on the idea that this is a democracy, and in a democracy the government is me, and if the government kills somebody then I'm killing somebody.

Democracy is like a raft: It won't sink, but you will always have your feet wet.

When a judge goes beyond [his proper function] and reads entirely new values into the Constitution, values the framers and ratifiers did not put there, he deprives the people of their liberty. That liberty, which the Constitution clearly envisions, is the liberty of the people to set their own social agenda through the process of democracy.

Once you don't vote your ideals ... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy.

Fundamentalists are not friends of democracy. And that includes your fundamentalists in the United States.

Every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, discussion, adoption.

Democracy, I do not conceive that ever God did ordain as a fit government either for church or commonwealth. If the people be governors, who shall be governed?

Without the truth of the people, politics degenerates into mere spectacle and democracy declines, leaving demagoguery and cynicism to fill the void.

Democracy tends to ignore, even deny, threats to its existence because it loathes doing what is needed to counter them," explained Revel. "It awakens only when the danger becomes deadly, imminent, and evident. By then, either there is too little time left for it to save itself, or the price of survival has become crushingly high.

There cannot be true democracy unless all citizens are able to participate fully in the lives of their country.

Democracy, republics: What do these words signify?

Democracy is mob rule with income taxes.

Arbitrary rule has its basis, not in the strength of the state or the chief, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who submits almost without resistance to the domineering power.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

Hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but a scarcity of democracy.