Democracy Quotes - Page 89

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.

The effect of a representative democracy is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation.

The whole point of constitutional democracy is the peaceful transfer of power; of Al Gore passing the baton to George W. Bush, even though that election was very suspiciously called.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.

We ought to be talking about our democracy being under assault right now and what we're going to do about it and not what somebody said in July about James Comey. That's a distraction, that's not what's going on.

Why are you sitting here when our democracy is under assault with the FBI acting at the behest of [Republican Congressman] Jason Chaffetz and sitting here acting like it is something legit?

I think the American people ought to take their democracy back.

You are sitting here defending an assault on American democracy. Somebody probably said nice things about anybody at a given point. This is an unprecedented event that was done at the behest of the House Republicans that was leaked to the press by the House Republicans.

Liberty in Islam is the liberty to be a Muslim, democracy likewise, individualism likewise.

Rather than a democracy, we increasingly have an elective dictatorship. People are merely permitted to choose who will violate the laws and the Constitution.

American democracy is capsizing as a result of the vast increase in the number of government dependents and government employees.

If I rule out violent anarchism, there remains pacifist, anti-nationalist, anti-capitalist, moral, and anti-democratic anarchism (i.e., that which is hostile to the falsified democracy of bourgeois states). There remains the anarchism which acts by means of persuasion, by the creation of small groups and networks, denouncing falsehood and oppression, aiming at a true overturning of authorities of all kinds as people at the bottom speak and organize themselves.

Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual.

Democracy is not a mathematical deduction proved once and for all time. Democracy is a just faith fervently held, commitment to be tested again and again in the fiery furnace of history.

This is regrettable indeed for a nation that aspires to teach democracy to other nations, because, as Burke said: "Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other."

American democracy and the Soviet system may peacefully exist side by side and compete with each other. But one cannot evolve into the other.

I salute all the nations of the Arab Spring and I salute the heroic people of Syria who are striving for freedom, democracy and reform.

The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.

To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy.

The release of 'Chinese Democracy' marks a historic moment in rock n' roll.

Conservatives are giving up on democracy because it's not efficient. They want an autocratic regime.

In America, we've got to get back to these base principles of what democracy is.

The Little Guy, behind whom politicians strategically coalesce — thumping majorities prevail in a democracy — cannot abide by a reality in which greater wealth affords greater "access."

Complete equality isn't compatible with democracy, but it is a agreeable to tolitarianism. After all the only way to ensure the equality of the slothful, the inept and the immoral is to suppress everyone else.

Ultimately as much as the film industry is a business, it's a democracy. And the audience votes on how they feel based on the way they spend their money for tickets.