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Democracy Quotes

Barack Obama and the Nigerian president Bola Tinubu have the most entries, with H. L. Mencken and Franklin Roosevelt behind them, so a lot of the page is speeches. For the dry material go to Mencken in Smart Set (1910), who called democracy the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard; Shaw’s Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), on election by the incompetent many instead of appointment by the corrupt few; and Disraeli’s Lothair (1870).

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch” is credited to Benjamin Franklin and flagged misattributed. The earliest version in the notes is a Usenet post from 23 April 1990. The line that democracy is the most vile form of government, credited to Madison, is flagged too.

Random quote on Democracy

Most quoted on democracy:

In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.

Anatole France

Where are the real sources of human dignity, freedom and modern democracy, if not in the concept of infinity to which all men are equal?

Louis Pasteur Discours de réception de Louis Pasteur (1882)

In whichever way a democratic system might be sick, terrorism does not heal it; it kills it. Democracy is healed with democracy.

Christopher Hitchens And Yet...: Essays (2015)

My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.

Abbie Hoffman Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980)

We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly.

Vladimir Putin

A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.

Antonin Scalia

These are all existential threats to our democracy and our American way of life.

Bruce Springsteen

We are not all equal, and never shall be; the true postulate of democracy is not equality but the faith that every man and woman is worth while.

Stanley Baldwin

The family meal is the nursery of democracy.

Michael Pollan

In a democracy, a government’s policies are rarely questioned until the underlying assumptions that create them are questioned.

Warren Farrell Father and Child Reunion (2001)

In a democracy, all voters are equal but not all are responsible. Compulsory voting ignores that elemental truth.

Geoffrey Blainey

There are no countries that have diplomatic relations with other countries simply because of democracy and freedom. They are all focused on national interests.

Chen Chien-jen Chen Chien-jen (2017)

Higher education helps create the kind of citizenry that is central to a democracy’s ability to function and perhaps even to survive.

Robert Rubin

There is no place in a democracy for humiliating people as a policy instrument.

Raul Roco

Democracy is not merely a system of government, it is a way of life.

Amlan Datta For Democracy (1970)

Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?

Graham Greene

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Robert Maynard Hutchins

Corruption is nature's way of restoring our faith in democracy.

Peter Ustinov Backstabbing for Beginners : My Crash Course in International Diplomacy (2008)

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

Michael Moorcock The Warlord of the Air (1971)

You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun.

Helen Thomas

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