Democracy Quotes - Page 29

Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies.

There are some flaws in the assumptions made for democracy. It is assumed that all men and women are equal or should be equal. Hence, one-man-one-vote. But is equality realistic? If it is not, to insist on equality must lead to regression.

I think it is extremely important that the West support this experiment [of Tunisian democracy] with investment, with aid, with symbolic support, not just flows of democracy assistance …If Tunisia can’t make it, what are the prospects for the rest of the Arab world?

In a racially divided society, majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy.

In Democracy, man exploits man; in Communism, it's the other way round.

The Soviet system will not evolve into American democracy or vice-versa.

Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.

The U.S. is a cosmetic democracy.

Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated.

We have learned to say that the good must be extended to all of society before it can be held secure by any one person or any one class. But we have not yet learned to add to that statement, that unless all [people] and all classes contribute to a good, we cannot even be sure that it is worth having.

Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.

Democracies, unlike dictatorships, are forgiving and generous, but they cannot survive unless they fight.

One does not export democracy in an armored vehicle.

We're on the verge of civil war in Northern Ireland. Why? Because if you take away the forums of democracy you don't have anything left.

Recreation is not a secondary concern for a democracy. It is a primary concern, for the kind of recreation a people make for themselves determines the kind of people they become and the kind of society they build.

Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.

The danger is not only that these austerity measures are killing the European economies but also that they threaten the very legitimacy of European democracies - not just directly by threatening the livelihoods of so many people and pushing the economy into a downward spiral, but also indirectly by undermining the legitimacy of the political system through this backdoor rewriting of the social contract.

If experience teaches us anything at all, it teaches us this: that a good politician, under democracy, is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.

Free speech is too dangerous to a democracy to be permitted

Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

Immigration is everyone’s business: it is one of the most important national issues. The idea that it is too dangerous to be debated is a mockery of democracy. It is too important not to debate.