Democracy Quotes

"An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination"

Voltaire, Writer

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

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"Advertising is the very essence of democracy"

Anton Chekhov, Dramatist

"Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor"

James Russell Lowell, Poet

"Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country"

Maximilien Robespierre, Leader

"I sow; my successor reaps. This is the majesty of democracy"

Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, President

"We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote"

Alice Paul, Activist

"The need to help spread democracy and the ability to do that will be much greater if we break this addiction to oil, which gives the oil princes and sultans the power in the Mideast"

Jay Inslee, Politician

"You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun"

Helen Thomas, Journalist

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity"

Irving Kristol, Editor

"Democracy without morality is impossible"

Jack Kemp, Politician

"Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant"

John Simon, Critic

"And one of the frustrating parts, but it's an inherent part of our democracy, is we have separation of powers"

George Pataki, Politician

"Adultery is the application of democracy to love"

H. L. Mencken, Writer

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

"Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization"

Winston Churchill, Statesman

"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"

Gilbert K. Chesterton, Writer

"Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be"

Sydney J. Harris, Journalist

"Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers"

Aristotle, Philosopher

"Democracy is indispensable to socialism"

Vladimir Lenin, Leader

"Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame"

Bertrand Russell, Philosopher

"Despite what many Americans think, most Soviets do not yearn for capitalism or Western-style democracy"

Dan Rather, Journalist

"There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship"

Ralph Nader, Lawyer

"It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning"

George Orwell, Author

"The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois"

Gustave Flaubert, Novelist

"Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments"

Andrew Jackson, President

"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change"

Dan Quayle, Vice President

"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"

Alexis de Tocqueville, Historian

"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"

Charles Bukowski, Poet

"The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity"

Jimmy Carter, President

"In a few decades, the relationship between the environment, resources and conflict may seem almost as obvious as the connection we see today between human rights, democracy and peace"

Wangari Maathai, Activist

"Communism destroys democracy. Democracy can also destroy Communism"

Andre Malraux, Author

"My thinking tends to be libertarian. That is, I oppose intrusions of the state into the private realm - as in abortion, sodomy, prostitution, pornography, drug use, or suicide, all of which I would strongly defend as matters of free choice in a representative democracy"

Camille Paglia, Author

"Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin"

Gore Vidal, Novelist

"Democracy is an abuse of statistics"

Jorge Luis Borges, Poet

"There is no dignity in wickedness, whether in purple or rags; and hell is a democracy of devils, where all are equals"

Herman Melville, Novelist

"Until the control of the issue of currency and credit is restored to government and recognized as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talks of the sovereignty of Parliament and of democracy is idle and futile"

William Lyon Mackenzie King, Politician

"The American people need to know the truth. The American people need to see the truth. In a democracy, letting the people know the truth is the essence of what it means to be free"

Barbara Boxer, Politician

"Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements"

Agnes Repplier, Writer

"Christianity is the root of all democracy, the highest fact in the rights of men"

Novalis, Poet

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