Democracy Quotes

I'm also very much aware that it is you who brought democracy to Chile

He who casts a vote decides nothing. He who counts the vote decides everything.

We enemies of universal suffrage never cease to be surprised by the enthusiasm aroused by the election of a handful of incapable men by a heap of incompetent men.

There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet.

Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

Great journalism does not get enough credit in our society, but it holds the powerful to account and plays a vital part in a functioning democracy.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

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 the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about.

I'm struck by how laughter connects you with people. It's almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you're just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.

The ordered working of our Republic, and of the democratic process, depends on a sense of decorum and restraint in all branches of government, and in the citizenry itself.

Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Hey, I remember you. I was gonna vote for you one time. But voting isn't cool. So I stayed home alone and got trashed on listerine.

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful... bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. In the full enjoyment of [life] every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to [life] artificial distinctions... to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society, who [cannot] secur[e] like favors..., have a right to complain of the injustice.

The man who wears the shoe knows best that it pinches and where it pinches, even if the expert shoemaker is the best judge of how the trouble is to be remedied.

I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.

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

The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes, priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations.

Unfortunately, you can't vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place.

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.