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Quotes about democracy

108 quotes from 83 people

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In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.
Anatole France1844–1924L’Île des Pingouins [Penguin Island] (1908), Book VI: Les Temps Modernes, Ch. II: Pyrot
- Money
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
Woodrow Wilson1856–1924Wilson’s War Message to Congress (1917)
- Liberty
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Gore Vidal1925–2012“Gods and Greens” (1989)
- Voting
The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.
Henry David Thoreau1817–1862Civil Disobedience (1849)In context
The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a people’s democracy. It’s the same difference between a jacket and a straitjacket.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Remarks at Human Rights Day event (10 December 1986)
- Clever Jabs
No democracy has ever long survived the failure of its adherents to be ready to die for it … My own conviction is this, the people must either go on or go under.
David Lloyd George1863–1945Address to a conference of trade union delegates, London (18 January 1918), in The Times (19 January 1918), p. 8
No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected.
Harry S. Truman1884–1972The Truman Doctrine (1947)
- Government
While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address (1861)
- Government
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
Adlai Stevenson II1900–1965Speech to the Los Angeles Town Club, Los Angeles, California (11 September 1952); Speeches of Adlai Stevenson (1952), p. 31
- Government
Here, in the first paragraph of the Declaration [of Independence], is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for how can “the consent of the governed” be given, if the right to vote be denied?
Susan B. Anthony1820–1906On the United States Declaration of Independence in her “Is It a Crime for a Citizen of the United States to Vote?” speech before her trial for voting (1873)
- Voting
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, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy.
Leo Strauss1899–1973Liberalism: Ancient and Modern (1968), “What is liberal education,” pp. 4-5
Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant.
Leo Strauss1899–1973Liberalism: Ancient and Modern (1968), “What is liberal education,” pp. 4-5
- Education
The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state-controlled police and military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy.
Edward Abbey1927–1989Abbey’s Road (1979)
- Guns
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
POP. J. O'Rourke1947–2022Parliament of Whores (1991)
- Government