Famous Quotes & Sayings

Mikhail Gorbachev

Democracy must learn to defend itself.

Mike Carey

No, there are no special places in hell. Hell is a democracy.

Nelson Mandela

A free press is one of the pillars of democracy.

Nelson Mandela

An educated, enlightened & informed population is one of the surest ways of promoting the health of a democracy

Noam Chomsky

Julian Assange shouldn't be the subject of a grand jury hearing, he should be given a medal. He's contributing to democracy.

Noam Chomsky

One of the benefits of a properly functioning democracy is minority rights and majority rule.

Noam Chomsky

Under capitalism, we can't have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.

Noam Chomsky

Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.

Noam Chomsky

There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" - recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?

Noam Chomsky

The more there is a need to talk about the ideals of democracy, the less democratic the system usually is.

John Ashcroft

We've got to understand that the whole nature of the way American democracy guards its freedom has been changed

Those who abhors democracy would rarely immigrate to an authoritarian state if they have to.

Margaret Atwood

The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

No tempest or conflagration, however great, is harder to quell than mob carried away by the novelty of power.

Ken Livingstone

If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It

Margaret Thatcher

All attempts to destroy democracy by terrorism will fail. It must be business as usual.

Margaret Thatcher

I'm also very much aware that it is you who brought democracy to Chile, you set up a constitution suitable for democracy, you put it into effect, elections were held, and then, in accordance with the result, you stepped down.

P. J. O'Rourke

It is a law of governance that democracies have to spend themselves dizzy. Citizens of democracies can, after all, tell their government to give them things.

Paul Johnson

Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.

Melissa Bean

Mr. Speaker, democracy works best when the American electorate is engaged and informed.

Mary Ritter Beard

Democracy cannot sustain itself amid a high degree of violence.

To find ways of practicing democracy, not ways of orating about it, is our great problem.

Mark McKinnon

A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best.

Mario Vargas Llosa

Maintain democracy or go to dictatorship: that is what is at stake in these elections.

Nicholas Sparks

Marriage is a partnership, not a democracy.

Mario Cuomo

Democracy is not meant to be efficient, it is meant to be fair.

Christopher Hitchens

The role of dissident is not, and should not be, a claim of membership in a communion of saints. In other words, the more fallible the mammal, the truer the example.

Harry Emerson Fosdick

The all but unanimous judgment seems to be that we, the democracies, are just as responsible for the rise of the dictators as the dictatorships themselves, and perhaps more so.

Fran Lebowitz

There's too much democracy in the culture, not enough in the society.

George Pataki

And one of the frustrating parts, but it's an inherent part of our democracy, is we have separation of powers.

George Orwell

Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism as I understand it.

George Montgomery

Democracy in China is like Viagra; no such thing as free elections.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Be careful when you cast out your demons that you don’t throw away the best of yourself.