Famous Quotes on Democracy

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Quote	Author	Rating	Rate
"I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy."	A. J. Liebling
"...Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth."	Abraham Lincoln
"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 government to the utmost."	Aristotle
"Democracy is cumbersome, slow and inefficient, but in due time, the voice of the people will be heard and their latent wisdom will prevail."	Author Unknown
"[Congress is] functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended-not very well. They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority."	Barber B. Conable, Jr
"While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty."	Charles Evans Hughes
"You see few people here in America who really care very much about living a Christian life in a democratic world."	Clare Boothe Luce
"Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking."	Clement Attlee
"Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. the most terrifying thing is what people do want."	Clive Alexander Barnes
"What I want to fix your attention on is the vast overall movement towards the discrediting, and finally the elimination, of every kind of human excellence -- moral, cultural, social or intellectual. And is it not pretty to notice how 'democracy' (in the incantatory sense) is now doing for us the work that was once done by the most ancient dictatorships, and by the same methods? The basic proposal of the new education is to be that dunces and idlers must not be made to feel inferior to intelligent and industrious pupils. That would be 'undemocratic.' Children who are fit to proceed may be artificially kept back, because the others would get a trauma by being left behind. The bright pupil thus remains democratically fettered to his own age group throughout his school career, and a boy who would be capable of tackling Aeschylus or Dante sits listening to his coeval's attempts to spell out A CAT SAT ON A MAT. We may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when 'I'm as good as you' has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish. The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway, the teachers -- or should I say nurses? -- will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturbable conceit and incurable ignorance among men."	Clive Staples Lewis
"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies against despots -- suspicion."	Demosthenes
"Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve."	George Bernard Shaw
"[The accords were] fig leaves of democratic procedure to hide the nakedness of Stalinist dictatorship."	George Frost Kennan
"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."	Gilbert Keith Chesterton
"Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy."	Irish Blessing
"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."	Irving Kristol
"The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity."	James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
"Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse."	Jawaharial Nehru
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."	Louis Dembitz Brandeis
"It is the common failing of totalitarian regimes that they cannot really understand the nature of our democracy. They mistake dissent for disloyalty. They mistake restlessness for a rejection of policy. They mistake a few committees for a country. They misjudge individual speeches for public policy." (Answering North Vietnamese charge that US could not endure)"	Lyndon Baines Johnson
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Browse Democracy quotes by Author:

Abraham Lincoln	Aristotle	Author Unknown
A. J. Liebling	Barber B. Conable, Jr	Charles Evans Hughes
Clare Boothe Luce	Clement Attlee	Clive Alexander Barnes
Clive Staples Lewis	Demosthenes	George Bernard Shaw
George Frost Kennan	Gilbert Keith Chesterton	Irish Blessing
Irving Kristol	James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.	Jawaharial Nehru
Louis Dembitz Brandeis	Lyndon Baines Johnson	Mary Catherine Bateson
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev	Noam Chomsky	Reinhold Niebuhr
Robert Lee Frost	Robert Maynard Hutchins	Roger Nash Baldwin
Sam(uel) James Ervin, Jr.	Shirley Mount Hufstedler	Thomas Jefferson
Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve	Walt Whitman	Will Rogers
Wystan Hugh Auden