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Democracy Quotes

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Democracy Quotes

“Women waited 144 years before earning suffrage. If a mature, multiparty democracy was so darn easy, everybody would have one.”

Ifs Years Easy Democracy Mature Earning Suffrage

Book:Great Powers: America and the World After Bush

Source: Great Powers: America and the World After Bush

“The Paris Commune was first and foremost a democracy. The government was a body elected by universal suffrage.”

Firsts Body Government Democracy Universal Paris Suffrage Communes Universal Suffrage

Author:C. L. R. James

“Meiklejohn's position is that free speech in a democracy is not an absolute flowing from the boundless source of some presumed 'natural right.' It is a practical necessity of 'self-government by universal suffrage,' for if the citizens are not permitted to argue out the issues of government, how can they be what they must be in a democracy - the rulers as well as the ruled?”

“The devotion of democracy to education is a familiar fact. The superficial explanation is that a government resting upon popular suffrage cannot be successful unless those who elect and who obey their governors are educated. Since a democratic society repudiates the principle of external authority, it must find a substitute in voluntary disposition and interest; these can be created only by education.”

Source: Democracy and Education: Top American Authors

“... woman does not see what people of intellect perceived fifty years ago: that suffrage is an evil, that it has only helped to enslave people, that it has but closed their eyes that they may not see how craftily they were made to submit.”

People Years May Doe Made Eye Evil Democracy Years Ago Intellect Fifty Submit Suffrage

Book:Anarchism and Other Essays

Source: Anarchism and Other Essays

“What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?”

Firsts Democracy Privilege Noble Doctrine Ass Voting Suffrage Boon

Author:H. L. Mencken

“Democracy turns upon and devours itself. Universal suffrage, in theory the palladium of our liberties, becomes the assurance of our slavery. And that slavery will grow more and more abject and ignoble as the differential birth rate, the deliberate encouragement of mendicancy and the failure of popular education produce a larger and larger mass of prehensile half-wits, and so make the demagogues more and more secure.”

“As believers in democracy we have not only the right but the duty to question existing mechanisms of, say, suffrage and to inquire whether some functional organization would not serve to formulate and manifest public opinion better than the existing methods. It is not irrelevant to the point that a score of passages could be cited in which Jefferson refers to the American Government as an experiment.”

Government Opinion Democracy Duty Organization Method Believer Experiments Score Manifest Passages Mechanism Irrelevant Public Opinion Suffrage American Government

Book:The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939

Source: The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1938-1939