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Democracy is a procedure to change rulers. To qualify democracy with an adjective–"people's democracy" during communism, "sovereign democracy" thereafter–means eliminating that procedure.

— Timothy D. Snyder

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Democracy

More quotes by Timothy D. Snyder

Ukraine is not Russia. Too many Ukrainians have tasted too much freedom for too long.

Ukraine is not a theater for the historical propaganda of others or a puzzle from which pieces can be removed. It is a major European country whose citizens have important cultural and economic ties with both the European Union and Russia.

Americans today are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism in the twentieth century.

On Tyranny (2017)

What does it mean when the wolf cries wolf? Most obviously, propagandists in Moscow and Kiev take us for fools—which by many indications is quite justified.

Since late November [2013], millions of Ukrainians have campaigned for a pro-European course, only to find themselves branded extremists, foreign agents and criminals.

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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: Timothy D. Snyder (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.