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Democracy Quotes

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Democracy Quotes

“If you can see, hear, feel, and think, you should know that King Dollar rules the United States, and that the workers are robbed and exploited in this country to the heart's content of the masters.If you are not deaf, dumb, and blind, then you know that the American bourgeois democracy and capitalistic civilization are the worst enemies of labor and progress, and that instead of protecting them, you should help to fight to destroy them.”

“Only that Swiss in the heart want still a king or at least a strong Upper House of Parliament. Swiss long themselves for less democracy and more dictatorship.”

Want Heart Long Stills House Strong Democracy Kings Dictatorship Parliament Swiss Houses Of Parliament

Author:Peter Bichsel

“I ran because I became convinced after King was shot and killed, and Martin Luther King was one of the great heroes of my life, that politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live. If we don't like how we live, we can participate in the perfect most revolutionary act in a democracy, it's called voting.”

Ifs Mean Perfect Democracy Kings Hero Shots Killing Available Convinced Ran Revolutionary Voting Luther Not Perfect Great Hero

Author:Maynard Jackson

“Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity.”

“All talks about legacies of white supremacy must be tied to empowering the lives of poor and working people as a whole. The black agenda - from Frederick Douglas to A. Philip Randolph, Martin Luther King Jr, Fannie Lou Hammer to Ella Baker - has always been tied to race talk inseparable from expanding possibilities of democracy, expanding empowerment of everyday people.”

“In a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king--but a king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed by an executive administration. This is why the problem with democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions, when we all know this not to be true?”

Source: First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

“It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or consuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy, or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa, as we read was done in Rome.”

People Ifs Done Wisdom Politics Causes Economy Democracy Depends Kings Authority Vices Kingdoms Liberalism Rome Consent Vice Versa Aristocracy Magistrates People Can Change

Author:Robert Bellarmine

“Democracy is always the work of kings. Ashes, which in themselves are sterile, fertilize the land they are cast upon.”

Democracy Land Kings Casts Ashes

Book:Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor

Source: Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor

“Just as a royal rule, if not a mere name, must exist by virtue of some great personal superiority in the king, so tyranny, which is the worst of governments, is necessarily the farthest removed from a well-constituted form; oligarchy is little better, for it is a long way from aristocracy, and democracy is the most tolerable of the three.”

Ifs Way Wells Littles Long Government Form Three Names Virtue Democracy Worst Kings Mere Tyranny Superiority Royal Long Way Aristocracy Tolerable Oligarchy Great Person

Book:The Essential Aristotle

Source: The Essential Aristotle

“The mere fact of leaving ultimate social control in the hands of the people has not guaranteed that men will be able to conduct their lives as free men. Those societies where men know they are free are often democracies, but sometimes they have strong chiefs and kings.they have, however, one common characteristic: they are all alike in making certain freedoms common to all citizens, and inalienable.”

Source: An Anthropologist at Work

“The universe has no prince or king that it [Rome] would consider equal to its humblest citizen.”

Universe Democracy Kings Citizens Equal Rome Monarchy

Author:Pierre Corneille

“An editor is the uncrowned king of an educated democracy.”

Democracy Kings Educated Editors

Author:William Thomas Stead

“What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.”

People Faces Mother Democracy Movement Kings Tough Labor Including Rebellion Your Face Luther Woody Populist Abolitionist Labor Movement Paine Chavez Shay Suffragists

Author:Jim Hightower

“Reformist kings can save their dynasties now by helping their countries move smoothly into democracy, or they will end their years in exile like the Russian aristocrats of a century earlier.”

Years Ends Country Helping Moving Democracy Century Kings Exile Dynasty

Author:Elliott Abrams

“The question is, how do you stop the power elite from doing as much damage to you as possible? That comes through movements. It's not our job to take power. You could argue that the most powerful political figure in April of 1968 was Martin Luther King. And we know Johnson was terrified of him. We have to accept that all of the true correctives to American democracy came through these movements that never achieved formal political power and yet frightened the political establishment enough to respond.”