Che Guevara
Revolutionary, Guerrilla Leader
"Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians."
Democracy quotes
Democracy
2.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Aristotle
Philosopher
"Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms."
Immanuel Kant
Philosopher
"Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty."
Niccolo Machiavelli
Political Philosopher, Historian
"You know better than I that in a Republic talent is always suspect. A man attains an elevated position only when his mediocrity prevents him from being a threat to others. And for this reason a democracy is never governed by the most competent, but rather by those whose insignificance will not jeopardize anyone else's self-esteem."
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk
Statesman, Founder of Republic
"My people are going to learn the principles of democracy, the dictates of truth and the teachings of science. Superstition must go."
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Democracy quotes (page 1 of 129)
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"You and I have never seen democracy; all we've seen is hypocrisy."
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"Without God, there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience... without God, there is a coarsening of the society; without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure."
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"Democracy is a system where people are counted not weighed."
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"No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy."
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"Democracy is just a filler for textbooks! Do you actually believe that public opinion influences the government?"
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"Democracy, Republic: What do these words signify? What have they changed in the world? Have men become better, more loyal, kinder? Are the people happier? All goes on as before, as always. Illusions, illusions."
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"There is no democracy without socialism, and no socialism without democracy."
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"Democracy is the road to socialism."
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"The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate."
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"The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy - then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece. Probably the rarest form of life in American politics is the man who can turn on a crowd & still keep his head straight - assuming it was straight in the first place."
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"We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote."
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"Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged."
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"Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires."
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"Today, I am an inquisitor. I shall not sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution."
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"Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy."
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"Communism needs democracy like the human body needs oxygen."
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"In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority."
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"The intellect of two thousand asses cannot bring forth a single man's thought."
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"The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination,' we might say - exercised through the mass media."
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"The more people participate in the process of their own education, and the more people participate in defining what kind of production to produce, and for what and why, the more people participate in the development of their selves. The more people become themselves, the better the democracy."
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