Democracy is indispensable to socialism.

Chinese Democracy’ wasn’t trying to tell China to have a democracy or anything like that. I don’t have an opinion on what kind of government they should have. My thing is, I went to stay there for about three months, and everywhere I went, the people are so shielded from what’s going on in the world.

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

Democracy doesn’t work unless the public is informed.

There can only be democracy when money is not allowed to be spent in Politics.

We can’t have democracy if we’re having to protect you and our users from the government over stuff we’ve never had a conversation about. We need to know what the parameters are, what kind of surveillance the government is going to do, and how and why.

Democracy must be built from the bottom up, not imposed from the outside.

Nobody and nothing will stop Russia on the road to strengthening democracy and ensuring human rights and freedoms.

A son of a poor man is standing in front of you today. This is the strength of a democracy.

For the world to follow, we must do more than rattle our sabers and demand allegiance to our vision simply because we believe we are right. We must provide a reason for others to aspire to that vision. And that reason must come with more than the repetition of a bumper-sticker phrase about freedom and democracy.

Our democracy is precious, and it requires constant vigilance and care.

One of the necessary accompaniments of capitalism in a democracy is political corruption.

Democracy is eternal and human. It dignifies the human being; it respects humanity.

Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness

Trump is an anathema to America’s democracy and values.

Britain, which in the years immediately before this war was rapidly losing such democratic virtues as it possessed, is now being bombed and burned into democracy.

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic

The consistent optimism of our liberal culture has prevented modern democratic societies both from gauging the perils of freedom accurately and from appreciating democracy fully as the only alternative to injustice and oppression. When this optimism is not qualified to accord with the real and complex facts of human nature and history, there is always a danger that sentimentality will give way to despair and that a too consistent optimism will alternate with a too consistent pessimism.

It is the evil in man that makes democracy necessary, and man’s belief in justice that makes democracy possible.

We have, on the whole, more liberty and less equality than Russia has. Russia has less liberty and more equality. Whether democracy should be defined primarily in terms of liberty or equality is a source of unending debate.

Religion is so frequently a source of confusion in political life, and so frequently dangerous to democracy, precisely because it introduces absolutes into the realm of relative values.

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more constant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves.

Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant.

Democracy is the most vile form of government.

When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Everywhere in the world, we’re aware that democracy has incredible flaws and that the word has been used, especially in the United States, to wage wars.

Let’s not give the electoral process so much importance. We have to be cynical about it. Let’s give importance to the real democracy that’s constructed on a day-to-day basis. That’s my hopeful perspective on it.

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.

We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we’re being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We’ve been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn’t. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It’s the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.

Democracy should be practiced not every six years, but every day.

Today, of course, the world’s perception of India has changed tremendously. People understand its role in world affairs; they understand that India is not some backward nation. In fact, it is the fastest growing free-market democracy in the world today, and that says it all.

Democracy and markets are both fundamental building blocks for a decent society. But they clash at a fundamental level. We need to balance them.

Unlike what neo-liberals say, market and democracy clash at a fundamental level. Democracy runs on the principle of ‘one man (one person), one vote’. The market runs on the principle ‘one dollar, one vote’.

Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.

It’s not. This was a poor example of democracy internationally, but also within our own country.

A Democracy is the most vile form of government there is!

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

There’s really no point to voting. If it made any difference, it would probably be illegal.

Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

There is only a sparse handful of exceedingly rich countries that could begin to afford to maintain the bulimically wasteful expense of an American democracy

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

We know that democracy does not mean the coercion of all into a deadly—and, finally, wicked—mediocrity but the liberty for all to aspire to the best that is in him, or that has ever been.

As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast – is choice.

Donald Trump attacked the values that this union holds most sacred – democracy, truth, respect for our fellow Americans of all races and faiths, and the sanctity of the free press, there’s a straight line from his wanton disregard for the truth to the attacks on journalists perpetrated by his followers.

A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men’ – democracy must cling to that message. For it is my deep conviction that democracy cannot live without that true religion which gives a nation a sense of justice and moral purpose.

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

I am a Christian and a Democrat, that’s all

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country

I believe that people have a right to decide their own destinies; people own themselves. I also believe that, in a democracy, government exists because (and only so long as) individual citizens give it a temporary license to exist, in exchange for a promise that it will behave itself. In a democracy, you own the government. It doesn’t own you

Democracy is the best chance for the best people.

Democracy: a festival of mediocrity.

Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.

Democracy is all about not electing the wrong man-eating lizard.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don’t have to waste your time voting

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

The Tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Democracy is not a tearing down; it is a building up. It does not deny the divine right of kings; it asserts the divine right of all men

In politics as in philosophy, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.

The truths of the Judaic-Christian tradition, are infinitely precious, not only, as I believe, because they are true, but also because they provide the moral impulse which alone can lead to that peace, in the true meaning of the word, for which we all long. . . . There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves.

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.

A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.

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.

That is neoliberal democracy in a nutshell: trivial debate over minor issues by parties that basically pursue the same pro-business policies regardless of formal differences and campaign debate. Democracy is permissible as long as the control of business is off-limits to popular deliberation or change; i.e. so long as it isn’t democracy.

In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.

Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless.

In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

When everyone agrees to a single solution and a single plan, there’s nothing more efficient in the world than an efficient democracy.

Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

When Bush says democracy, I often wonder what he’s referring to

Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.

Democracy is talking itself to death. The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them. There is too much foolishness, too much lost motion. I have stopped the talk and the nonsense. I am a man of action. Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day.

Democratic institutions generally give men a lofty notion of their country and themselves.

Amongst democratic nations, each new generation is a new people

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can’t have it both ways. Socialism is a new form of slavery.

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude

The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens

Democracy encourages the taste for physical gratification

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.

Our public life withers when only the most extreme voices get attention. Most of all, democracy breaks down when the average person feels their voice doesn’t matter; that the system is rigged in favor of the rich or the powerful or some narrow interest.

In a democracy, power is not permanent.