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Democracy Quotes

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Democracy Quotes

“The contemporary tendency in our society is to base our distribution on scarcity, which has vanished, and to compress our abundance into the overfed mouths of the middle and upper classes until they gag with superfluity. If democracy is to have breadth of meaning, it is necessary to adjust this inequity. It is not only moral, but it is also intelligent. We are wasting and degrading human life by clinging to archaic thinking.”

Source: All Labor Has Dignity

“We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about.”

People World Should Looks Country Sometimes Democracy Rights Sacrifice West China Tendencies Efficient Criticise Short Sighted Authoritarian Government

Author:Ai Weiwei

“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.”

“All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them.”

Literature Democracy Tendencies Satisfying Slips Glimpse Hints Perplexed

Book:Democracy and Social Ethics

Source: Democracy and Social Ethics

“Interactivity has the virtue of democracy, conferring upon everyone with access to a computer the right and opportunity to be heard, but it's also saddled with democracy's vice - a tendency to assume that everyone who has a right to be heard has something to say that's worth hearing.”

Opportunity Virtue Democracy Heard Computer Assuming Vices Hearing Access Tendencies

Book:Sleeping with Extra-terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety

Source: Sleeping with Extra-terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety

“Democracies are notorious for a tendency to obey the feelings rather than the mind; thus the nature of democracies often makes itdifficult to conclude a peace after a hard-won war. Generous victors are rare.”

Mind War Hard Feelings Democracy Victory Tendencies Generous Notorious

Author:Amos Elon

“I like the Americans for a great many reasons. I like them because even the modern thing called industrialism has not entirely destroyed in them the very ancient thing called democracy. I like them because they have a respect for work which really curbs the human tendency to snobbishness.”

Humans Reason America Democracy Modern Ancient Tendencies Destroyed Great Men Curb Snobbishness

Author:Gilbert K. Chesterton

“The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue; its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood.”

Real Levels Democracy Conditions Tendencies Drag Lowest Manhood Vulgar Unworthy Untrue

Author:James F. Cooper

“The Bolshevik revolution was a counter-revolution. Its first moves were to destroy and eliminate every socialist tendency that had developed in the pre-revolutionary period. Their goal was as they said; it wasn't a big secret. They regarded the Soviet Union as sort a backwater. They were orthodox Marxists, expecting a revolution in Germany. They moved toward what they themselves called "state capitalism," then they moved on to Stalinism. They called it democracy and called it socialism. The one claim was as ludicrous as the other.”