Voting And Democracy Quotes

#1. Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections. #Quote by Meg Greenfield

#2. Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism. #Quote by Benazir Bhutto

#3. Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin. #Quote by Gore Vidal

#4. The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections. #Quote by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

#5. 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. #Quote by Charles Bukowski

#6. Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. #Quote by James Russell Lowell

#7. Now the first step has to be taken, the step towards democracy. This step is full of risks, and requires trust on all sides. We don't know where it will lead. But if we just stand still, we will have no chance of escaping the violence. #Quote by Daniel Barenboim

#8. A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped. #Quote by Norman Mailer

#9. 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. #Quote by Franklin D. Roosevelt

#10. To win the cause we all believe in, the spread of true democracy all over the world, we need to win by example, not just with speeches but by example; not just with military might but by gaining the respect of the world. #Quote by Barbara Boxer

#11. Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. #Quote by George Bernard Shaw

#12. Democracy needs support, and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies. #Quote by Benazir Bhutto

#13. Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses. #Quote by H.L. Mencken

#14. Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. #Quote by Clement Attlee

#15. Democracy has a habit of making itself generally disagreeable by asking the powers-that-be at the most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers-that-ought-to-be #Quote by James Russell Lowell

#16. You measure democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists. #Quote by Abbie Hoffman

#17. Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. #Quote by H.L. Mencken

#18. Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave. #Quote by Karl Kraus

#19. What we have is two important values in conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns in a healthy democracy. You can't have both. #Quote by Dick Gephardt

#20. The Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing sustaining and powerful movement whose interest is to prove that religion has a healing side as well as a killing side, and that democracy is the consequence of conscience #Quote by Bill Moyers

#21. We cannot cut and run. If we are to ensure freedom and democracy, it is essential that we follow through on our obligation to bring about stability in Iraq. #Quote by Richard Shelby

#22. Under the leadership of Henry Kissinger, first as Richard Nixon's national security adviser and later as secretary of state, the United States sent an unequivocal signal to the most extreme rightist forces that democracy could be sacrificed in the cause of ideological warfare. Criminal operational tactics, including assassination, were not only acceptable but supported with weapons and money. A CIA internal memo laid it out in unsparing terms: On September 16, 1970 [CIA] Director [Richard] Helms informed a group of senior agency officers that on September 15, President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him and authorized up to $10 million for this purpose. . . . A special task force was established to carry out this mandate, and preliminary plans were discussed with Dr. Kissinger on 18 September 1970. #Quote by John Dinges

#23. In a democratic society, there is always a struggle between the machinery of national security and press freedom, and the public's right to know is usually the loser. When our national security czars become, in effect, our media gatekeepers, we lose one of the essential cornerstones of a true democracy - an informed citizenry. Distracted by the manufactured flow of information produced by a news media that has fallen under the spell of its own official sources, and beguiled by militaristic and patriotic Hollywood myth-making, the American public is largely benighted when it comes to understanding the wars and covert violence carried out in our name. Spooked will explain exactly how this process occurs and what happens to journalists who dare to break the rules. The #Quote by Nicholas Schou

#24. Experience is terribly important. You'll notice that the congressmen who want to hold up the government are all junior people and new to the game. And of course they will say, 'Oh, it's Washington cynicism, where they all compromise and work out backroom deals.' But that's actually how democracy works." Which #Quote by Sarah Vowell

#25. I told him that if the protesters really wanted change, they should call their senator, raise money, donate, go out canvassing. They talked about real democracy, but no one wanted to slog through legal challenges, legislation, lobbying, fielding candidates, campaigning. "Too much hard work. All the drums and chanting and meetings and speeches" -- I grabbed my phone from him, tossed it on the couch, took his hand in mine and wrestled with him, letting myself brush up against a little attack-- "they're just to make people /feel/ like something's happening #Quote by Will Boast

#26. Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with. #Quote by Steven Pinker

#27. New technologies and resources offer exciting opportunities. They democratise access to information. #Quote by Sara Sheridan

#28. Intimidation, harassment and violence have no place in a democracy. #Quote by Mo Ibrahim

#29. The effect of a representative democracy is to refine and enlarge the public views, by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of the nation ... #Quote by James Madison

#30. We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.

But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell's dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifug #Quote by Neil Postman

#31. The victims I've worked with taught me that individuals want to believe they are entitled to justice. My community taught me that when the choice is clear-cut enough, so do entire counties.

We have become profoundly discouraged about whether we have such choices. My own experience is that we do, if we are willing to pay the price. We need better data to make decisions based on performance, but getting that data is a matter of passing the right laws requiring crunchable statistics and mandatory public reports. The rest is on us. If Tip O'Neil was right, if all politics is local, then our local district attorneys are the place to start. Crime is local. What we do about it is as close as the nearest voting booth. #Quote by Alice Vachss

#32. There is an uncomfortable willingness among privacy campaigners to discriminate against mass surveillance conducted by the state to the exclusion of similar surveillance conducted for profit by large corporations. Partially, this is a vestigial ethic from the Californian libertarian origins of online pro-privacy campaigning. Partially, it is a symptom of the superior public relations enjoyed by Silicon Valley technology corporations, and the fact that those corporations also provide the bulk of private funding for the flagship digital privacy advocacy groups, leading to a conflict of interest.


At the individual level, many of even the most committed privacy campaigners have an unacknowledged addiction to easy-to-use, privacy-destroying amenities like Gmail, Facebook, and Apple products. As a result, privacy campaigners frequently overlook corporate surveillance abuses. When they do address the abuses of companies like Google, campaigners tend to appeal to the logic of the market, urging companies to make small concessions to user privacy in order to repair their approval ratings. There is the false assumption that market forces ensure that Silicon Valley is a natural government antagonist, and that it wants to be on the public's side - that profit-driven multinational corporations partake more of the spirit of democracy than government agencies.


Many privacy advocates justify a predominant focus on abuses by the state on the basis that th #Quote by Julian Assange

#33. Advocating democracy has, by other people, often been taken as a form of imperialism, and not without some justification. So the important thing in a democracy is that it doesn't necessarily have to agree with what America's interests are, and it doesn't necessarily have to be serving American interests. #Quote by George Soros

#34. Freed slaves returned to Africa settled in a section of what was known as the "Pepper Coast" and on July 26, 1847, issued a Declaration of Independence and established a constitution based on the political principles denoted in the United States Constitution. In doing so they established the independent Republic of Liberia. Law and Order was something the ruling class of Liberians prided themselves on. The Americo Liberians, as they called themselves, were uber-Conservatives and had a glorified picture of what the American government was like. As Conservatives they saw themselves living a privileged lifestyle, sustained by their faith in God and the blessings that had been bestowed upon them by this deity. Amongst themselves there was much talk about the subjects of freedom, liberty, democracy and independence. They felt that these idealisms were deserved because of their exceptionalism. Taking a page from the concept of American exceptionalism, they fantasied of their very own Liberian exceptionalism, completely forgetting the indigenous natives living among them. Whereas the Americo Liberians lived an affluent lifestyle reflecting the antebellum era in the Southern tier of the United States, the local blacks, for the greatest part lived in squalor. In 1980, a violent military coup shattered the way of life in Liberia. Led by army Master Sergeant Samuel Doe, the country's ruling group of Americo-Liberians were brutally overthrown and frequently executed. Doe's term as Presid #Quote by Hank Bracker

#35. Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon
destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroyus. A nation that doesn't read much doesn't know much. And a nation that doesn't know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth ... The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns. #Quote by Jim Trelease

#36. In Astrology, the moon, among its other meanings, has that of "the common people," who submit (they know not why) to any independent will that can express itself with sufficient energy. The people who guillotined the mild Louis XVI died gladly for Napoleon. The impossibility of an actual democracy is due to this fact of mob-psychology. As soon as you group men, they lose their personalities. A parliament of the wisest and strongest men in the nation is liable to behave like a set of schoolboys, tearing up their desks and throwing their inkpots at each other. The only possibility of co-operation lies in discipline and autocracy, which men have sometimes established in the name of equal rights. #Quote by Aleister Crowley

#37. We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong. #Quote by Thomas Jefferson

#38. There is no more important struggle for American democracy than ensuring a diverse, independent and free media. Free Press is at the heart of that struggle. #Quote by Bill Moyers

#39. You must drop all your democracy. You must not believe in 'the people.' One class is no better than another. It must be a case of Wisdom, or Truth. Let the working classes be working classes. That is the truth. There must be an aristocracy of people who have wisdom, and there must be a Ruler: a Kaiser: no Presidents and democracies. #Quote by D.H. Lawrence

#40. 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. #Quote by G.K. Chesterton

#41. Are we Pakistanis, children of a lesser God? Is there one law for the west and one for us? Is our democracy supposed to be only democracy if you give us a no objection certificate? #Quote by Imran Khan

#42. I think democracy fails under a variety of conditions and one of the conditions occurs when people don't have the ability to get the kind of information they need to make up their mind. Ideologically, I don't care much for FOX News. But the truth is that, as long as there are countervailing points of view available on the spectrum, it doesn't matter. #Quote by Howard Dean

#43. Democracy is indispensable to the working class, because only through the exercise of its democratic rights, in the struggle for democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its class interests and its historic task. #Quote by Rosa Luxemburg

#44. We have to know about the world around us: whom and what we're voting for and how best to address the vital social, political, and economic issues facing our communities, our nation, and our planet. No one person can do it all, yet no one person is exempt from participating. We need and depend upon each other. #Quote by Lama Surya Das

#45. If there were a cultural issue around which, in 1945 itself, a large measure of agreement existed, it was that the new cinema in Europe should be democratic and the inema should never again be allowed to be used, as it had been in Nazi Germany and to a lesser extent Fascist Italy, as an instrument of totalitarian ideology. Over this question it was the Americans who took the lead. Following the Allied combat troops into Italy and France came the spiritual crusaders of the Psychological Warfare Branch (PWB), armed not with guns but with movies, mostly documentaries but also a handful of features, designed to re-educate the peoples of formerly Fascist and occupied Europe about the virtues of democracy. #Quote by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith

#46. My father offered his life so our democracy could live. My mother devoted her life to nurturing that democracy. I will dedicate my life to making our democracy reach its fullest potential: that of ensuring equality for all. My family has sacrificed much, and I am willing to do this again if necessary. #Quote by Benigno Aquino III

#47. European democracy was originally imbued with a sense of Christian responsibility and self-discipline, but these spiritual principles have been gradually losing their force. Spiritual independence is being pressured on all sides by the dictatorship of self-satisfied vulgarity, of the latest fads, and of group interests. #Quote by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#48. Don't try to pull the wool over my eyes. You can't fool an old sheep like me. To prove it, I'll tell you that I've been continuously voting for the same person for president for years and years, a few of them even before he died. #Quote by Jarod Kintz

#49. You can't have a free democracy if you don't have a free media that can provide vital and independent information to the people. #Quote by Rupert Murdoch

#50. To Muslims, I repeat that Islam is a great and noble religion but that all Muslims and Muslim majority societies did not in the past and do not now live up to this nobleness: critical reflection is required about faithfulness to our principles, our outlook on others, on cultures, freedom, the situation of women, and so on. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. To Westerners, I similarly repeat that the undeniable achievements of freedom and democracy should not make us forget murderous "civilizing missions," colonization, the destructive economic order, racism, discrimination, acquiescent relations with the worst dictatorships, and other failings. Our contradictions and ambiguities are countless. I am equally demanding and rigorous with both universes. #Quote by Tariq Ramadan