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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"Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials."
"Somewhere in the other side of nowhere is a place in space beyond time where the Gods of mythology dwell. ... These gods dwell in their mythocracies as opposed to your theocracies, democracies, and monocracies. They dwell in a magic world. These Gods can even offer you immortality."
"Education and justice are democracy's only life insurance."
"We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarised republic."
"Democracy don't rule the world, You'd better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that's better left unsaid."
"What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'."
"If you put your politicians up for sale, as the US does (alone in this among industrialized democracies), then someone will buy them--and it won’t be you; you can’t afford them."
"Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses."
"Democracy is like a tambourine, not everyone can be trusted with it."
"It should be the power of our vote, not the size of our bank accounts, that drives our democracy"
"An educated, enlightened & informed population is one of the surest ways of promoting the health of a democracy"
"Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy."
"In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way."
"At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point."
"Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery."
"Democracy is all about not electing the wrong man-eating lizard."
"Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote."
"Eternal Vigilance is the price of democracy."
"Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%."
"The motive power of democracy is love"
