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Leadership Quote by Paul Wellstone

"The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy"

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Wellstone’s line lands like an accusation disguised as a diagnosis: democracy hasn’t simply been weakened; it’s been evacuated. The verbs do the heavy lifting. “Stripped” implies an active, deliberate removal, not a natural fading. Someone took the wiring out of the wall and left the switch in place. What remains “denote[s] hollowness and hypocrisy,” a brutal pairing that frames democracy as both empty in substance and performative in posture - the rituals persist, the ethics don’t.

The specific intent is not to argue about voting mechanics but to reclaim democracy as a moral project. “Moral imperatives” signals obligations: solidarity, fairness, accountability, a commitment to the vulnerable that can’t be outsourced to market logic or bipartisan etiquette. Wellstone, a senator associated with progressive populism and plainspoken dissent, is pushing back against a political culture that treats democracy as branding: photo ops at polling places, soaring rhetoric about “freedom,” then policy that flatters donors, entrenches inequality, or rationalizes cynicism as realism.

The subtext is also self-indicting. He’s not only criticizing opponents; he’s warning that institutions can rot from within when leaders accept a thinner definition of the public good. In that sense, the quote functions as a litmus test: if democracy is merely procedure, it can coexist with exploitation. If it’s moral, it demands redistribution of power - and that’s precisely what the hollow version is designed to avoid.

Quote Details

TopicEthics & Morality
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Wellstone, Paul. (2026, January 16). The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-idea-of-democracy-has-been-stripped-of-it-84505/

Chicago Style
Wellstone, Paul. "The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy." FixQuotes. January 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-idea-of-democracy-has-been-stripped-of-it-84505/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy." FixQuotes, 16 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-idea-of-democracy-has-been-stripped-of-it-84505/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

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Paul Wellstone (July 21, 1944 - October 25, 2002) was a Politician from USA.

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