Home / Topics / Democracy Quotes

Democracy Quotes

Browse 5972 quotes about Democracy.

Democracy Quotes

“Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations.”

Democracy Corporations Billionaire

Author:Hillary Clinton

“Prosperity can't be just for CEOs and hedge fund managers. Democracy can't be just for billionaires and corporations. Prosperity and democracy are part of your basic bargain, too.”

Democracy Prosperity Managers Corporations Fund Ceo Bargains Billionaire Hedge Fund

Author:Hillary Clinton

“The country is headed toward a single and splendid government of an aristocracy founded on banking institutions and moneyed incorporations and if this tendency continues it will be the end of freedom and democracy, the few will be ruling...I hope we shall...crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations which dare already to challenge our government to trial and bid defiance to the laws of our country. I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies.”

“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.”

Might Democracy Limits Ideology Corporations Legislature

Book:The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition)

Source: The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (Revised Edition)

“At bottom, the Court's opinion is thus a rejection of the common sense of the American people, who have recognized a need to prevent corporations from undermining self-government since the founding, and who have fought against the distinctive corrupting potential of corporate electioneering since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. It is a strange time to repudiate that common sense. While American democracy is imperfect, few outside the majority of this court would have thought its flaws included a dearth of corporate money in politics.”

“Corporation: a miniature totalitarian state governed by a hierarchy of unelected officials who take a dim view of individualism, free speech, equality and eggheads. The backbone of all Western democracies.”

States Views Democracy Speech Western Corporations Officials Individualism Free Speech Hierarchy Backbone Miniatures Totalitarian State Eggheads

Author:Rick Bayan

“Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy.”

“We are not hated because we practice democracy, value freedom, or uphold human rights. We are hated because our government denies these things to people in Third World countries whose resources are coveted by multinational corporations. That hatred we have sown has come back to haunt us in the form of terrorism....”

“Corporations are a good thing. But corporations should not be running our government... They have driven the American economy since its founding, and the prosperity of our country is largely dependent on the free operation of corporations. But some corporations don't want free markets, and they don't want democracy. They want profits.”

Want Should Country Government Running Economy Democracy Good Things Profit Prosperity Driven Our Country Corporations Operations Dependent Founding Free Market American Economy

Author:Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Shall we have recourse to the art of printing? But this has not destroyed property or aristocracy or corporations or paper wealth in England or America, or diminished the influence of either; on the contrary, it has multiplied aristocracy and diminished democracy.”

Art America Wealth Democracy Influence Paper England Property Contrary Destroyed Corporations Printing Aristocracy Recourse

Book:The Political Writings of John Adams

Source: The Political Writings of John Adams

“A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind.”

“The establishment can't admit [that] it is human rights violations that make ... countries attractive to business - so history has to be fudged, including denial of our support of regimes of terror and the practices that provide favorable climates of investment, and our destabilization of democracies that [don't] meet [the] standard of service to the transnational corporation.”

“Of course, corporations and governments have a right to something for their money. They pay the wages. But they don't have the ethical right to literally purchase the copyright of a citizen's potential contribution to society. In a democracy they should not have the legal right to silence the quasi-totality of the functioning élite in order to satisfy a managerial taste for control and secrecy.”

Should Government Order Courses Pay Silence Democracy Citizens Taste Corporations Contribution Ethical Wages Secrecy Totality Copyright Contribution To Society

Author:John Ralston Saul

“The problem with American democracy is the American corporation, which is a slave holder construct, pure and simple. It's totally invasive, and people are as tightly controlled within the walls of a corporation as they are in a totalitarian society.”

People Problem Simple Democracy Wall Pure Slave Corporations Controlled Constructs American Democracy

Author:Richard Grossman

“Some corporations don't want free markets, and they don't want democracy. They want profits. And they use our campaign finance system to loot our commons, to steal from our treasury, and the other shared resources of our community - the air, the water, the public lands, the wildlife, the things that belong to all of us that are held in trust for future generations. Corporations cannot act philanthropically in America.”

“What we have now is democracy without citizens. No one is on the public's side. All the buyers are on the corporations' side. And the bureaucrats in the Administration don't think the government belongs to the people.”

People Thinking Government Sides Democracy Citizens Administration Corporations Bureaucrats Buyers

Author:Ralph Nader

“Most people that I know don believe that a handful of corporations request sit together without disclosure, by the way, and pump hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars into the political process. That is not the democracy that many of us believe America should be.”

People Knows Way Should Believe Together America Political Process Millions Democracy Dollars Corporations Handful Request Pumps Disclosure

Author:Bernie Sanders

“I'm talking of the idea, basically very widespread in America, that the less government the better, which is obviously being used to the advantage of the big corporations, but none-the-less has very radical implications. The idea of a people that exercises a great deal of federalist or confederalist control, the ideal of a grass-roots type of democracy, the idea of the freedom of the individual which is not to get lost in the mazes of anarcho-egotism à la Stirner, or for that matter right-wing libertarianism.”