Quotes about democracy
108 quotes from 83 people
Friedrich Engels1820–1895Principles of Communism (1847)
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)
Mikhail Gorbachev1931–2022Speech to the 27th Party Congress, Moscow (25 February 1986)
Grover Cleveland1837–1908At the celebration of the sesquicentennial of Princeton College (October 22, 1896).
Barack Obamaborn 1961Remarks at a Qualtrics conference, Salt Lake City (6 March 2019)
Edmund Burke1729–1797Letter to Thomas Mercer
Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919Speech at Asheville, North Carolina (9 September 1902)The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914Epigrams, p. 358The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Benjamin Disraeli1804–1881Lothair (1870), Ch. 17.Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.
Alexander Hamilton1757–1804Remarks at the New York ratifying convention (1788), in Elliot’s Debates, vol. 2, p. 348To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Bertrand Russell1872–1970Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 18: The Taming of PowerH’aint we got all the fools in town on our side? And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town?
It is better to be a total failure in democracy than a martyr or the crème de la crème in tyranny.
Joseph Brodsky1940–1996Nobel Prize Lecture (8 December 1987)The most tyrannical dictatorships the world has known have existed under the aegis of parliaments.
Muammar Gaddafi1942–2011The Green Book (1975)
