D Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with D. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Democracy is a government of the devil, by his demons, and for his gatekeepers.”
“Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think. Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river.”
“Democracy is a great institution and, therefore, it is liable to be greatly abused.”
Source: India of My Dreams
“Democracy is a hegemonic tool of the West and contrary to Islam. Why do you act as though the entire world needs democracy? And when it comes to homosexuality, the issue is clearly dealt with by the Koran. It says it is forbidden and should be punished.”
“Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.”
“Democracy is a life, and involves continual struggle.”
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Source: Notes On Democracy
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.”
“Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political — legislative and administrative — decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.”
“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.”
“Democracy is a pretty word. Democracy is a captivating magic. The oppressed classes always wanted and the oppressing ones always promised a democracy. But this was precisely for democracy that the both parts had always fought. The great French Revolution proclaimed the great appeal "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity". The history showed that from the class viewpoint, they could indicate different things, distinct contents; these concepts must be filled with different sense. In the class society, in the society locked in a state, Liberty is always at the top of somebody’s spear! Equality is the Achilles’ heel, into which this spear is plunged. Humanity is the pledge for plunging it by all force.”
Source: Socialism Is Dead! Long Live Socialism!: The Marx Code-Socialism with a Human Face
“Democracy is a problem and we don't want to get rid of it.”
“Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices. In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular.”
“Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is becoming, rather than being. It can be easily lost, but is never finally won.”
“Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.”
“Democracy is a revelation, but it's complicated. There are elections to hold, politics to create, rights to assert, grievances to settle and institutions to build. To many, it's exhilarating. For others, it can be disappointing when it turns out that democracy doesn't immediately make life better.”
“Democracy is a series of choices.”
“Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.”
“Democracy is a stupid idea anyway!”
“We agree. It’s demagogue-prone. That’s a disease to which electoral systems are vulnerable. Yet demagogues are easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words that ring of religious fervor and god-fearing sincerity. Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice, Dama. The practice can always be detected.”
"By Truthsayers?"
"By anyone who learns the signs: Repetition. Great attempts to keep your attention on words. You must pay no attention to words. Watch what the person does. That way you learn the motives.”
Source: Chapterhouse: Dune
“Democracy is a system were ignorants choose a government, comunism is a system where ignorants govern themselves.”
“Democracy is a system where people are counted not weighed.”
“Democracy is a universal value”
“Democracy is a very admirable form of government - for dogs”
Source: Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe
“Democracy is a very bad form of government ... but all the others are so much worse.”
“Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. Belief in the Common Man is a familiar article in the democratic creed. That belief is without basis and significance save as it means faith in the potentialities of human nature as that nature is exhibited in every human being irrespective of race, color, sex, birth and family, of material or cultural wealth. This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life. To denounce Nazism for intolerance, cruelty and stimulation of hatred amounts to fostering insincerity if, in our personal relations to other persons, if, in our daily walk and conversation, we are moved by racial, color or other class prejudice; indeed, by anything save a generous belief in their possibilities as human beings, a belief which brings with it the need for providing conditions which will enable these capacities to reach fulfillment. The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.”
“Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature. . . . This faith may be enacted in statutes, but it is only on paper unless it is put in force in the attitudes which human beings display to one another in all the incidents and relations of daily life.”
Source: The Later Works, 1925-1953
“Democracy is a word all public men use and none understand.”
“Democracy is about constant vigilance. It's not straightforward, there will always be setbacks and you get particular be it religious fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalism - a partly conservative approach and actually trying to put women in a more traditional role. And we have to resist that.”
“Democracy is about criticism.”
“Democracy is about criticism. I didn't elect Obama because he's a black; I voted for Obama because he was the right person at the time. Period. The exceptionalism of a black U.S. President is not important to me. It's what he does. And who he has at the table. And what he does to change the world - that's what's important.”
“Democracy is about disagreement, uncertainty, complexity, and making mistakes. It's about having to listen to arguments you think are obviously completely wrong; it's about being angry with other people, and their being angry with you. It's about it all taking much longer to get something passed that you think reasonable, and about taking a long time resisting some policy you think is dipshit. Democracy is about having to listen, and compromise, and it's about being wrong (and admitting it). It's about guessing - because the world is complicated - the best course of action, and trying to look at things from various perspectives, and letting people with those various perspectives participate in the conversation.
Democracy is hard; demagoguery is easy.”
Source: Demagoguery and Democracy
“Democracy is about non-arbitrary decisions. Democracy is about spreading decisions; it is not about destroying processes.”
“Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process.”
“Democracy is acceptable to neo-liberals only in so far as it does not contradict the free market.”
Source: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism
“Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.”
“Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.”
“Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation.”
Source: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition)
“Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.”
“Democracy is always an unfinished experiment, testing the capacity of each generation to live freedom nobly.”
“Democracy is always frustrating.”
“Democracy is always harmful to elite interests. Almost by definition.”
“Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.”
Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor
“Democracy is always, by nature and constitution, the triumph of mediocrity.”
“Democracy is an abuse of statistics.”
“Democracy is an awful way to run a country, but it's the best system we have.”
“Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right.”
“Democracy is an experimental system. I like it when states try out new ideas. I think we ought to expand, not contract, our federalist system.”
“Democracy is an extraordinary adventure. It's difficult, full of daring and risk and danger. But it's the greatest gift we have.”
“Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.”
“Democracy is an impossible thing until the power is shared by all, but let not democracy degenerate into mobocracy.”
Source: Gandhi: Selected Political Writings