Quotations: Democracy
If we are to keep our democracy, there must be one commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice.The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.
... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Australian social scientist quoted by Noam Chomsky
The highest measure of democracy is neither the 'extent of freedom' nor the 'extent of equality', but rather the highest measure of participation.
Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles.
Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.
Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens.
Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
Those wanting to improve democracy in their countries should not wait for permission.
Democracy means decision by those concerned.
Carl-Friedrich von Weizsaecker
In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.
Charles DeGaulle
In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told.
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
Freedom without obligation is anarchy. Freedom with obligation is democracy.
General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.
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.
In free countries, every man is entitled to express his opinions and every other man is entitled not to listen.
My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
A constitutional state is like daily bread, like water to drink and air to breath, and the best thing about democracy is that it is the only system capable of securing the constitutional state.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, are right.
Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
Democracy cannot be forced upon a society, neither is it a gift that can be held forever. It has to be struggled hard for and defended everyday anew.
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
That government is best which governs least.
A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.
Calm and order can be just as dangerous to democracy as uneasiness and disorder.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Complete equality isn't compatible with democracy, but it is a agreeable to totalitarianism. After all the only way to ensure the equality of the slothful, the inept and the immoral is to suppress everyone else.
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
In a democracy the people get what the majority deserves.
Thinking of mass democracy as government controlled by its employees helps explain the difficulty of changing government policy.
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.
Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone.
Democracy means having the choice. Dictatorship means being given the choice.
The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.
The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.
Any doctrine that weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.
Democracy evolves where freedom is able to determine its own policy.
Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.
The well being of democracies regardless of their type and status is dependent on one small technical detail: The right to vote. Everything else is secondary.
Every nation has the government it deserves.
I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.
It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.
We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate.
People despise the lust for power that originates from a craving for homage and for the attributes of power.
Not our location is important, but the direction in which we move.
Every person knows that he should do what unites, not divides, him and other people.
Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters.
The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.
In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.
Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Retaliation is counter-poison and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of Love alone can destroy the poison of hate.
I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense.
To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one's moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.
Democracy and violence can ill go together.
Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.
In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.
Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.
The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.
Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.
The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.
A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
What you do is of little significance, but it is very important that you do it.
We must become the change we want to see in the world.
The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts - that is where the battle should be fought.
Performance of one's duties should be independent of public opinion.
The spirit of democracy cannot be superimposed from the outside. It must come from within.
I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.
Democracy means: Sticking to the rules of the game, even when the referee is not looking.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
In actual fact those who do not care for politics and sit on the fence do indeed side for a political party: The ruling party.
The dignity of man is in free choice.
Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.
Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.
A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Democracy feeds on argument, on the discussion as to the right way forward. This is the reason why respecting the opinion of others belongs to democracy.
Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.
The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom.
The more corrupt the state, the numerous the laws.
The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.
I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.
Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by education.
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Creative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
When the government fears the people, that is LIBERTY. When people fear the government, that is TYRANNY.
When a nation's government becomes more fearful of its citizens' rights than protective of them, that nation's future is only despotism and extinction.
Face the truth squarely. In politics that is always the best and the only correct attitude.
False rhetoric and false boastfulness spell moral ruin and lead unfailingly to political extinction.
Honesty in politics is the result of strength; hypocrisy is the result of weakness.
Our idea is that a state is strong when the people are politically conscious. It is strong when the people know everything, can form an opinion of everything, and do everything consciously.
Don't be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully, and more systematically what you have done badly.
People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.
Democracy is when you are not closed for being open.
The pleasure of governing must certainly be exquisite, if we may judge from the vast numbers who are eager to be concerned with it.
A great many laws in a country, like many physicians, is a sign of malady.
This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement -- that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it -- that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.
A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot.
Dr. Farooq's
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Bangladesh 1971 Genocide Liberation Bangladesh 1971 Genocide Liberation Hindu Genocide East Pakistan
Bangladesh 1971 Genocide Liberation Bangladesh 1971 Genocide Liberation Hindu Genocide East Pakistan
Bangladesh 1971 Genocide Liberation Bangladesh 1971 Genocide Liberation Hindu Genocide East Pakistan