Democracy Quotes
837 quotes
"People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people."
"The first duty of a man is to think for himself"
"You show me a capitalist, and I'll show you a bloodsucker"
"You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn't that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena."
"In a room wherepeople unanimously maintaina conspiracy of silence,one word of truthsounds like a pistol shot."
"Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners."
"Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them."
"The Revolution introduced me to art, and in turn, art introduced me to the Revolution!"
"The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end."
"Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred."
"The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too."
"Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures."
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
"Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle."
"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby."
"Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!"
"My people are going to learn the principles of democracy the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go. Let them worship as they will, every man can follow his own conscience provided it does not interfere with sane reason or bid him act against the liberty of his fellow men."
"A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel."
"We live in a system that espouses merit, equality, and a level playing field, but exalts those with wealth, power, and celebrity, however gained."
"But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove."
"Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism."
"Errors do not cease to be errors simply because they’re ratified into law."
"I knew I was alone in a way that no earthling has ever been before."
"It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do."
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.--as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS"
"The principle of democracy is a recognition of the sovereign, inalienable rights of man as a gift from God, the Source of law."
"In a well-functioning democracy, the state constitution is considered more important than God's holy book, whichever holy book that may be, and God matters only in your private life."
"I have an unshaken conviction that democracy can never be undermined if we maintain our library resources and a national intelligence capable of utilizing them."[Letter to Herbert Putnam; in: Waters, Edward N.: Herbert Putnam: the tallest little man in the world; Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 33:2 (April 1976), p. 171]"
"The lesson we are indebted to Egypt for, our future generations learned that in the face of oppression silence is never golden."
"A good education helps us make sense of the world and find our way in it"
"He didn't ask "Where will you spend eternity?"as religious the-end-is-near picketers did but rather, "With what, in this modern democracy, will you meet the demands of your soul?"
"I think it's hard to learn democracy when we make children prisoners until they're nineteen years old."
"Democracy should always be viewed with a philosophical perspective rather than a political one, because after all democracy was born to a philosopher and murdered by a politician."
"What followed was a period of lost time: three years, during which I felt myself circling the questions that had been circling me, though I never found the answers I needed. While searching, I went for walks. I read. I taught myself the art of reading while walking. I lay under trees and watched the clouds creep across the sky through a veil of leaves. I passed whole months thinking. I discovered more about the properties of loneliness, how it is like the slow squeeze of testicles by a hand that has just been in the refrigerator. If I could not find a way to be authentically in the world, then I would find a superior way of hiding, and to that end I tried on different masks: shy, graceful, pensive, buoyant, jovial, frail - they were the simple masks that had one defining characteristic. Other times I tried on more complicated masks, somber and buoyant, vulnerable yet cheerful, proud yet brooding. These I ultimately abandoned as they required too much upkeep on an energy level. Take it from me: complex masks eat you alive in maintenance."
"When you withdraw from the world, the world withdraws too, in equal measure. It's a two-step, you and the world. I didn't look for trouble, and it wore me down that none found me. Doing nothing is as tumultuous for me as working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on the morning of a market crash. It's how I'm made. Nothing happened to me in three years and it was very, very stressful."
"Democracy in crime was turning out no different from democracies everywhere: a sublime idea in theory, soiled by the reality that deep down nobody really believes that all men are created equal."
"Man's inclination to justice makes democracy possible; but man's capacity for injustice makes it necessary.' The optimism we need to prevent ourselves from destroying our own democratic freedoms and, indeed, our own human habitat must be based on reasoned pessimism."
"I think that in our earlier history--the Gettysburg Address or something--there was the conscious sense that democracy was an achievement. It was not simply the most efficient modern system or something. It was something that people collectively made and they understood that they held it together by valuing it."
"So I asked Dr Ceric if he thought there was a conflict between European values and Islam. ‘Not at all,’ he said. ‘Respect for other religions lies at the heart of Islam. And the principle of democracy is even anchored in Islam.’ When I looked surprised he explained: ‘Go right back to the origins of Islam.After Muhammad died, how did his followers seek his successor? They consulted with each other and chose his closest friend Abu Bakr in a democratic vote. Democracy is absolutely Islamic."
Kristiane Backer, From MTV to Mecca: How Islam Inspired My Life
"Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war."
"The world, viewed philosophically, remains a series of slave camps, where citizens – tax livestock – labor under the chains of illusion in the service of their masters."
"A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people."
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that."
"LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!True anyhow no matter how manyLiars use those words."
"Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error, or rather that common consent in vice which these worthy men would have to be law."
"Constitutional democracy, you see, is no romantic notion. It's our defense against ourselves, the one foe who might defeat us."
"Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarcy, that in America the law is King. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other."
"Harmony is our natural state of being, and so, when our energies become too stagnant, chaos is thrown into the mix to stimulate what will eventually result in balance and invite flow. The trick is to not let chaos trap or define you… simply allow it to create movement in the vehicle of your life so that you can snap your eyes open and take back control of the wheel. Do not lose yourself in the storm, instead, be the calm in the storm."
"Destroying hope is a critically important project. And when it is achieved, formal democracy is allowed—even preferred, if only for public relation purposes. In more honest circles, much of this is conceded. Of course, it is understood much more profoundly by beasts in men's shapes who endure the consequences of challenging the imperatives of stability and order."
Noam Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance
"A call to embrace democracy is the worst insult to a society that is still alien to civilisation. It is like being asked to dance to the tune of mob justice."
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