Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Super PACs and a corrupt campaign finance system are destroying American democracy. We're proud that we have received four million individual contributions, more than any candidate in American history at this point.
If the members of parliament no longer consider themselves mandatories of the taxpayers but deputies of those receiving salaries, wages, subsidies, doles, and other benefits from the treasury, democracy is done for.
Our democracy is not a product but a continual process. It is preserved not by monuments but deeds. Sometimes it needs refining; sometimes it needs amending; sometimes it needs defending. Always, it needs improving.
Since the birth of our Nation, no other right has been more important than having the ability to vote. Unfortunately, as history has shown, the denial of this right to minorities is a scar on our system of democracy.
If we fail now, then we will have forgotten in abundance what we learned in hardship: that democracy rests on faith; freedom asks more than it gives; and the judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored.
Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics! I've heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria, but I've never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis.
When a democracy reaches a point where the politicians cannot say no to the people, and both parties are competing for votes by promising even more spending or even lower taxes, or both, the experiment is about over.
I confess to considerable doubts about the eventual stability of democracy, unless buttressed by constitutional safeguards and a general climate of opinion which thoroughly understands the case for liberty in general
I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.
Surely there is not a capitalist or well-informed person in this world today who believes that [World War I] is being fought to make the world safe for democracy. It is being fought to make the world safe for capital.
We have to have a more realistic foreign policy and not a utopian one where we say, oh, we're going to spread freedom and democracy, and everybody in the Middle East is going to love us. They are not going to love us.
Our society is connecting workers with the products people consume and recognizing workers for their contributions. It is important to do that, and to have organized labor - a middle class - to preserve our democracy.
Organizing around a common interest is a fundamental part of democracy. We should no more try to take away the right of individuals to collectively bargain than we should try to take away the right to a secret ballot.
We do not understand democracy in its bourgeois meaning--of babbling, lack of discipline, anarchy. We understand democracy as the active participation of the citizens in formulating and implementing the Party's policy.
The potential for the abuse of power through digital networks - upon which we the people now depend for nearly everything, including our politics - is one of the most insidious threats to democracy in the Internet age.
For example, we have developed an artistic and a literary culture. Nevertheless, the ideals of technological culture remain underdeveloped and therefore outside of popular culture and the practical ideals of democracy.
Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life.
Three times before, in the 1850s, the 1890s, and the 1920s, oligarchs took over the American government and threatened to destroy democracy. In each case, they overreached, and regular folks took back their government.
You are never wrong when you have voted because you've acted in accordance with your conscience and your beliefs, and you've exercised your democratic right, which is, you know, perfectly legitimate in our democracies.
Democracy in Yemen did not stop, instead it is in a continuous development, there is no other way to follow rather than democracy, it is our national way for building up our country, it was not imposed on us by others.
I do not think you can push public expenditure significantly above 60 per cent and maintain the values of a plural society with adequate freedom of choice. We are here close to one of the frontiers of social democracy.
American democracy is supposed to be the paradigm for the rest of the world, and it no longer is. Citizens cannot be guaranteed that they can walk into a voting booth with any assurance that their vote will be counted.
I am not concerned with dodging the odium of the word. The proposed definition of democracy is socialistic . . . (democracy) should be characterized not so much socialistic, as unscrupulously and loyally nationalistic.
In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies.
The Germans should be the first to sympathize with us [Egyptians]. They know how difficult it is to build a democracy following a dictatorship, and they were the first to be critical of Morsi's anti-democratic policies.
Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.
Democracy is an interesting, even laudable, notion and there is no question but that when compared to Communism, which is too dull, or Fascism, which is too exciting, it emerges as the most palatable form of government.
I am confident that in the end freedom and democracy will prevail over terror and tyranny. We will win this war on terror - and when we do Americans, the British, Iraqis, and people around the world will be more secure.
The role of the press and the protections which we afford it are today more important than ever before, because we dwell in a society where belief in our governments and in the strength of our institutions is declining.
There are enough bad films coming out of this town already without the process being more democratized. I'm a guy who loves democracy. I'm all for democratizing any process, but I think there is a price to pay for that.
If we had had time and the occasion to develop a new socialism in the GDR, socialism with a human face, with democracy, this might have been an example also to West Germany. The development would have run the other way.
How do we get democracy at the international level? That's our problem. and it's essentially the same problem people faced in the 18th Century when they tried to get democracy nationally. Now we need it internationally.
Well my briefing was that Honduras was a small and vulnerable country just back on the path towards democracy it was about to have just before I arrived, the first elections for a civilian president in more than 9 years.
First of all, the world criticizes American foreign policy because Americans criticize American foreign policy. We shouldn't be surprised about that. Criticizing government is a God-given right - at least in democracies.
Some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islamic terror are Muslims, the vast, vast, vast majority of whom are people who believe in pluralism, freedom, democracy, individual rights.
Most of ideologies are not based on the individual - no matter what they say. There are these peoples' democracies, nationalism - they're all dictatorships. And I think any kind of dictatorship is bad for the individual.
Capitalism under democracy has a further advantage: its enemies, even when it is attacked, are scattered and weak, and it is usually easily able to array one half of them against the other half, and thus dispose of both.
And the principle which distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable.
To define twentieth-century humanism briefly, I would say that it is a philosophy of joyous service for the greater good of all humanity in this natural world and advocating the methods of reason, science, and democracy.
With regard to Turkey, I have been to Ankara. Turkey is a democracy. We certainly, we certainly, in the future, ought to encourage our ally to live up to their own democratic institutions and their own democratic ideals.
Every democracy is constructed day-to-day. And the electoral process reduces and minimalizes every single aspect of human complexity. We're putting it into pamphlets. We're doing a publicity show. We're becoming symbols.
The reality is that we are hated not because of our democracy, freedoms, and generous social security system; rather, we are hated because of our involvement in foreign conflicts and quarrels that were never our concern.
The principles governing Western democracies, of which Israel rightly considers itself a part, are based on the assurance that everyone has a vote, but also that the minority needs to yield to the wishes of the majority.
What we're doing is saying what happens with the establishment and how are we as ordinary human beings are used as pawns. What do we really know about what goes on! We think we are a democracy.... Are we? I'm not so sure.
I do not believe that the values which the Western democracies consider essential to civilization can survive in a world rent by the international anarchy of nationalism and the economic anarchy of competitive enterprise.
After the Soviet Union collapsed, people thought the last Soviet generation was going to be the great hope for democracy. When that failed, their hopes shifted to the first post-Soviet generation, and then the second one.
Jon Stewart is a remarkable satirist and parodist in the vein of Mark Twain, because Jon Stewart understands what Mark Twain knew, which is that the truth goes down more easily in a democracy when it's marinated in humor.
As you are well aware Russia is actively working to undermine our democracy and hurt American businesses at the same time. Now more than ever Americans are looking to Congress for leadership and we must be a united front.
One-man-one-vote combined with "free entry" into government-democracy--implies that every person and his personal property comes within reach of-and is up for grabs by-everyone else: a "tragedy of the commons" is created.