A. J. Muste:
The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.
Agnes Repplier:
Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
Aldous Huxley:
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Alex Carey:
... the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
Australian social scientist, quoted by Noam Chomsky in World Orders Old and New
Alexis de Tocqueville:
The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.
Aristotle:
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
Barbara Ehrenreich:
That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.
Barry Goldwater:
Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.
Bill Vaughan:
A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
C. S. Lewis:
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
Demosthenes:
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.
Dorothy Thompson:
It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.
Dorothy Thompson:
The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.
Dorothy Thompson:
Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.
E. B. White:
Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.
E. B. White:
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
Edward Dowling:
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. [1941]
Eleanor Holmes Norton:
The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.
Eugene McCarthy:
As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.
Eugene V. Debs:
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
