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Quotes about democracy

108 quotes from 83 people

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This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic — not our democratic republic.
George W. Bushborn 1946Comments on the storming of US Capitol (2021)
- Voting
Our country is more important than the politics of the moment. Let the officials elected by the people fulfill their duties and represent our voices in peace and safety.
George W. Bushborn 1946Comments on the storming of US Capitol (2021)
- Politics
He who first shortened the labor of copyists by device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating a whole new democratic world: he had invented the art of printing.
Thomas Carlyle1795–1881Sartor Resartus (1833–1834), Bk. I, ch. 5.
- Technology
Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president.
Johnny Carson1925–2005
- Presidency
We’ve become now an oligarchy instead of a democracy. And I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards of the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.
Jimmy Carter1924–2024Statement in an interview on SuperSoul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey, as quoted in “Jimmy Carter Tells Oprah America Is No Longer a Democracy, Now an Oligarchy” by Jon Levine, in .Mic (September 24, 2015)
- America
A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy.
G. K. Chesterton1874–1936The Everlasting Man (1925)
- Government
It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.
Winston Churchill1874–1965Speech in the House of Commons (11 November 1947), published in 206–07 The Official Report, House of Commons (5th Series), 11 November 1947, vol. 444, cc.
I’m struck by how laughter connects you with people. It’s almost impossible to maintain any kind of distance or any sense of social hierarchy when you’re just howling with laughter. Laughter is a force for democracy.
John Cleeseborn 1939From The Human Face, BBC Television (2001)
- Laughter
Government resting upon the will and universal suffrage of the people has no anchorage except in the people’s intelligence.
Grover Cleveland1837–1908At the celebration of the sesquicentennial of Princeton College (October 22, 1896).
- Intelligence
There cannot be true democracy unless women’s voices are heard.
Hillary Clintonborn 1947Keynote Address at the Vital Voices Conference in Vienna, Austria (11 July 1997)
- Women
There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.
Calvin Coolidge1872–1933
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Lothair (1870), Ch. 17.
- Politics
To have given each one of the million Negro free families a forty-acre freehold would have made a basis of real democracy in the United States that might easily have transformed the modern world.
W. E. B. Du Bois1868–1963Black Reconstruction in America (1935), p. 602
- Race
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.
Umberto Eco1932–2016“Can Television Teach?” in Screen Education 31 (1979), p. 12
- Television
The right to change the government by the ballot box and not the barrel of a gun; perhaps the best definition of a democracy.
Elizabeth II1926–2022During a speech to President Gerald Ford celebrating the 200th anniversary of American independence.