Home / Topics / Democracy Quotes

Democracy Quotes

Browse 5972 quotes about Democracy.

Democracy Quotes

“The democratic ideal springs from the ideas of liberty, equality, majority rule through free elections, protection of the rights of minorities, and freedom to subscribe to multiple loyalties in matters of religion, economics, and politics rather than to a total loyalty to the state. The spirit of democracy is the idea of importance and worth in the individual, and faith in the kind of world where the individual can achieve as much of his potential as possible.”

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals

“Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy.”

Difficult Situation Democracy Majority Inequality Wealthy Oligarchy Majority Rule

Book:The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century

Source: The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late 20th Century

“Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.”

Wells Democracy Groups Majority Connected Stealing Organized Minorities Democracies Have Majority Rule Minority Groups

Author:Llewellyn Rockwell

“A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.”

Bigs Turns Democracy Majority Handle Minorities Resolve Organize Committees Defects Abolish Majority Rule

Book:The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government

Source: The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government

“In a racially divided society, majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy.”

Democracy Racism Instruments Majority Divided Majority Rule

Author:Lani Guinier

“Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.”

“I call government that works the best for people open society, which is basically just another more general term for a democracy that is - you call it maybe a liberal democracy. It's not only majority rule but also respect for minorities and minority opinions and the rule of law. So it's really a sort of institutional democracy.”

People Government Law Term Opinion Democracy Majority Minorities Rule Of Law Majority Rule Liberal Democracy

Author:George Soros

“The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.”

Evil Force Party Democracy Succeed Election Majority Tyranny Fraud Hype Democracies Have Voting And Democracy Majority Rule Tyranny Of The Majority Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely Majority And Minority

Book:The History of Freedom (and other Essays)

Source: The History of Freedom (and other Essays)

“One of the benefits of a properly functioning democracy is minority rights and majority rule.”

Democracy Rights Benefits Majority Minorities Majority Rule

Author:Noam Chomsky

“It's precisely because America is not a democracy that we have survived! It's precisely because majority rule does have checks and balances on it. It's precisely because this is a representative republic that we have survived.”

Doe America Democracy Balance Majority Checks Republic Representatives Survived Majority Rule

Author:Rush Limbaugh

“Democracy, in any rational form, also imposes conditions on majority rule. That's what the Bill of Rights is about, for example.”

Form Democracy Rights Conditions Example Bills Majority Rational Bill Of Rights Majority Rule

Author:Noam Chomsky