"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people"
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Democracy rests on a daring kind of trust: that the millions who compose a nation, not a narrow elite, can imagine, decide, and build together. The line urges a shift in perspective from managing the masses to awakening them. Ordinary people are not a problem to be controlled but a reservoir of energy, judgment, and creativity that can be summoned when given voice, education, and responsibility.
Harry Emerson Fosdick, a liberal Protestant pastor shaped by the Social Gospel and the turbulence of the early 20th century, linked political self-rule to moral and spiritual convictions about human dignity. He had watched ordinary citizens face depression, war, and rapid social change, and he preached that collective courage and generosity appear when people are treated as partners rather than spectators. Democracy, then, is not only a mechanism of elections; it is a culture that cultivates capacity.
The phrase extraordinary possibilities does not imply that everyone is a prodigy. It points to the surprising power of collaboration and conscience: jury rooms where strangers wrestle toward fairness, school boards and town halls that sort messy problems, neighbors who organize relief when institutions falter. These are ordinary settings that produce uncommon outcomes when people are trusted and prepared.
Such conviction carries obligations. Societies must invest in public schools, a free press, fair procedures, and equal access so that potential can surface. Citizens must practice the disciplines of democracy: informed voting, patient deliberation, service, and the humility to change one’s mind. Against cynicism that dismisses the public as gullible and against technocratic contempt that assumes only experts can rule, the statement insists that leadership includes drawing out the best in others.
Democracy survives not by flattering the people but by expecting something of them and making that expectation credible. When institutions call forth responsibility and hope, ordinary people become the source of a nation’s most extraordinary achievements.
Harry Emerson Fosdick, a liberal Protestant pastor shaped by the Social Gospel and the turbulence of the early 20th century, linked political self-rule to moral and spiritual convictions about human dignity. He had watched ordinary citizens face depression, war, and rapid social change, and he preached that collective courage and generosity appear when people are treated as partners rather than spectators. Democracy, then, is not only a mechanism of elections; it is a culture that cultivates capacity.
The phrase extraordinary possibilities does not imply that everyone is a prodigy. It points to the surprising power of collaboration and conscience: jury rooms where strangers wrestle toward fairness, school boards and town halls that sort messy problems, neighbors who organize relief when institutions falter. These are ordinary settings that produce uncommon outcomes when people are trusted and prepared.
Such conviction carries obligations. Societies must invest in public schools, a free press, fair procedures, and equal access so that potential can surface. Citizens must practice the disciplines of democracy: informed voting, patient deliberation, service, and the humility to change one’s mind. Against cynicism that dismisses the public as gullible and against technocratic contempt that assumes only experts can rule, the statement insists that leadership includes drawing out the best in others.
Democracy survives not by flattering the people but by expecting something of them and making that expectation credible. When institutions call forth responsibility and hope, ordinary people become the source of a nation’s most extraordinary achievements.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
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