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Democracy is a system in which parties lose elections.

— Adam Przeworski

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Source: Democracy and the Market: Political and economic reforms in Eastern Europe and Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p.10.
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

More by Adam Przeworski

In general dictators have not done better at [economic] policies than democrats—far from it. Most dictators have ravaged their countries for personal gain. Scholars have asked whether democracy helps or hurts the economic growth of poor countries and despite many surveys, have come to no conclusive answer.

Fareed Zakaria (2007)

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Democracy

More quotes by Adam Przeworski

The simple answer to the question with which we began is that we do not know whether democracy fosters or hinders economic growth.

Democracy can be an equilibrium: a system of "self-government" in which the distinction between the rulers and the ruled disappears.

Adam Przeworski (1991)

Is “democracy,” as we understand the term today, an implementation of “self-government,” as this ideal was formulated when representative institutions were first established? The evidence is mixed.

Democracy and the Limits of Self-Government (2010)

Social democrats will not lead European societies into socialism. Even if workers would prefer to live under socialism, the process of transition must lead to a crisis before socialism could be organized.

Capitalism and social democracy (1985)

Marx may have erred in analyzing the nature of this conflict. Interests of workers and capitalists may not be irreconcilable under all circumstances, and workers may see the choice between capitalism and socialism differently depending upon the specific political and economic conditions under which they live.

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Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Adam Przeworski (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.