Democracy quotes
2.6K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside democracy — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I would say democracy once meant an organizational society and a state, in which the individual citizen is - feels - responsible, and acts responsibly, and participates in decision-making."
"Let's face it: however old-fashioned and out of date and devaluated the word is, we like the way of living provided by democracy."
"China has a history of thousands of years of feudalism and is still lacking in socialist democracy and socialist legality. We are now working earnestly to cultivate socialist democracy and socialist legality. Only in this way can we solve the problem."
"The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld."
"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."
"We're learning lessons from Africa. And the lesson that we need to learn is, how do we straighten our backs up in the face of these oligarchs and plutocrats who are trying to snatch the best of our democracy away?"
"Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic."
"Advertising is the very essence of democracy."
"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."
"Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents."
"The virtue of democracy is that is has placed limits on the absoluteness of power."
"One day we'll have a system that includes the rights of the people to make money and keep it, rather than a system where you can vote for the fox or the wolf, but there's no little box that endorses the chickens. Our time will come, you can be sure of that."
"It is not our diversity which divides us; it is not our ethnicity, or religion or culture that divides us. Since we have achieved our freedom, there can only be one division amongst us: between those who cherish democracy and those who do not."
"It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good."
"Even in a fake democracy, people ought to get what they want once in a while."
"The danger of having the Constitution twisted and misconstrued to support vested interests and prejudices must be guarded against if American democracy is to maintain a progressive character."
"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."
"A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot."
"Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse."
"Anarchism is democracy taken seriously."
