Quotes about democracy

The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.

Those who claim a natural link between capitalism and democracy are cheating with the facts in the same way the Catholic Church cheats when it presents itself as the "natural"advocate of democracy and human rights against the threat of totalitarianism - as if it were not the case that the Church accepted democracy only at the end of the nineteenth century, and even then with clenched teeth, as a desperate compromise, making it clear that it preferred monarchy, and that it was making a reluctant concession to new times.

But when Democracy... degenerates from popular ignorance into that popular passion or ferocity which precedes its decease, as (to cite illustrations from the upper world) during the French Reign of Terror, or for the fifty years of the Roman Republic preceding the ascendancy of Augustus, their name for that state of things is Glek-Nas. Ek is strife—Glek, the universal strife. (Chapter XII)

The fabric of American Empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of National power ought to flow immediately from that pure original fountain of all legitimate authority.

It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force.

Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote.

In the long run, the most important changes required to make globalization work are reforms to reduce the democratic deficit.

I didn't need this job. I ran for governor to find out if the American dream still exists in anyone's heart other than mine. I'm living proof that the myths aren't true. The candidate with the most money isn't always the one who wins. You don't have to be a career politician to serve in public office. You don't have to be well-connected. You don't even have to be a Democrat or a Republican. You can stand on your own two feet and speak your mind, because if people like where you're coming from, they will vote you in. The will of the people is still the most powerful force in our government.

She was grumbling. “The least he could have done was drop us near a town. Although in these parts they’d probably burn us as witches before asking any questions.” She shuddered. “I’m an awful snob about peasants, I’m afraid.”

I mentioned dryly that I thought those of her political persuasion had some sort of egalitarian duty to resist such prejudice. “Egalitarianism isn’t about prejudices,” she said, “it’s about equal shares of power. It’s the only means we have of steering some sort of even course through a future which is forever, by the very nature of the multiverse, unguessable. We have only institutions and a crude, fragile kind of democracy standing between us and absolute Chaos. That is why we must value and protect those institutions. And be forever reexamining them.”

Paternalism and centralism, the bane of capitalist as well as socialist politics, are for me the permanent enemy of democracy.

When it has become silly to suppose that the role of our government should be to "seek balance," then count me with the silly, for that means that this has become quite serious indeed. If it should be obvious to everyone that the government does not seek balance, that the government is simply the tool of the most powerful lobbyists, that the idea of holding the government to a different standard is absurd, that the idea of demanding of the government that it speak truth and not lies is just naïve, then who have we, the most powerful democracy in the world, become?

Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy.