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Our democracy is not the buildings, not the monuments. It's you being willing to work to make things better and being willing to listen to each other and argue with each other and come together and knock on doors and make phone calls and treat people with respect.

— Barack Obama Farewell to Staff Members (2017)

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Democracy

More quotes by Barack Obama

My view is that this is the beginning, not the end, of what is going to be a journey that takes some time.

We may have occasion in our lifetime to once again rise up in defense of our freedom, and pay the wages of war.

But he understood from hard-earned experience that true security comes through making peace with your neighbors.

The only certainty in war is human suffering, uncertain costs, unintended consequences.

Don’t shortchange the future, because of fear in the present.

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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

Attribution

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