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Democracy Quotes

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Democracy Quotes

“Democracy, material wealth, and universal education are the soil upon which modernism exists.”

Wealth Democracy Materials Universal Soil Modernism Material Wealth Universal Education

Author:Ai Weiwei

“A fool and his money are soon elected.”

“I'm convinced after spending three weeks in China and Tibet, unless the United States gets its act together, our grandchildren will be living in a world dominated by the People's Republic. China is simply inexorable in its pursuit of wealth, growth and power. It cares little about human rights, democracy, labor protections, fair trade rules or the environment. It is relentless in advancing its national interests.”

“Indeed, it is impossible to be neutral. In a world already moving in certain directions, where wealth and power are already distributed in certain ways, neutrality means accepting the way things are now. It is a world of clashing interests war against peace, nationalism against internationalism, equality against greed, and democracy against elitism and it seems to me both impossible and undesirable to be neutral in those conflicts.”

Source: Passionate Declarations: Essays on War and Justice

“Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence -- words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security -- there is the reality of enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while billions of people in the world are hungry, sick, homeless.”

Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God's children.”

Children Country Wisdom Politics Wealth Economy Democracy Capitalism Democratic Socialism Liberalism Capitalist Distribution Democratic Socialism Distribution Of Wealth Social Democracy Capitalism And Socialism

Book:From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice

Source: From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for Economic Justice

“The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few or many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is a democracy.”

Men Real Reason Government Differences Wealth Poor Poverty Democracy Oligarchy

Book:Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation

Source: Complete Works of Aristotle, Volume 2: The Revised Oxford Translation

“We have the men--the skill--the wealth--and above all, the will.... We must be the great arsenal of democracy.”

Men World War Wealth United States Democracy Skills War Of The Worlds World War Ii World War I Arsenal

Author:Franklin D. Roosevelt

“[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few.”

“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

“...and was disposed too often to idealize as a virtue that habit of mean subservience to wealth and social position which, after more than half a century of political democracy, is still the characteristic and odious vice of the Englishman.”

Mean Stills Political Social Wealth Half Virtue Democracy Century Position Habit Vices Characteristics Englishmen Half A Century Subservience

Book:Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism

Source: Religion And The Rise Of Capitalism

“The democratic ideal has always been related to a moderate level of inequality. I think one big reason why electoral democracy flourished in 19th century America better than 19th century Europe is because you had more equal distribution of wealth in America.”

“Indeed we do have an entitlement problem: some feel so entitled to power & wealth that they're willing to undermine our economy and our democracy.”

Feels Problem Wealth Economy Democracy Willing Entitled Entitlement

Author:Annabel Park

“Imagine what would happen if the government were to take the wealth of 200,000 of India's richest people and redistribute it amongst 2 million of India's poorest? We would hear a lot about socialist appropriation and the death of democracy. Why should taking from the rich be called appropriation and taking from the poor be called development?”

People Ifs Should Government Happens Wealth Poor Millions Democracy Rich Imagine Development India Socialist Poorest Appropriation

Author:Arundhati Roy

“There's one other interesting thing about Western democracy. It didn't arrive at the end point that Karl Marx thought it would that wealth would become more and more concentrated in the hands of the few, that eventually the few would be killed by the many who were deprived, and that a different kind of government would then develop. What happened in Western democracy is that we began to understand that a democratic system can't work if half of the people are starving and the other half are dieting.”

“In the words of Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, we have a choice between a democracy or vast concentrations of wealth. We have vast concentrations of wealth which has bought its way into our democracy with its political leaders who exemplify the merger of that economic and political elite.”

“Take the US. Women were not even able to vote until 90 ago, at about the same time they gained the right in Afghanistan. Rights of former slaves were very limited until the 1960s, and in some ways still are. In these and other domains there has been progress in democracy, though still seriously flawed. In other dimensions - the control of concentrated wealth over the political process, for example, things have gotten much worse in recent years. And there is much more, in both directions.”

Way Years Has Beens Stills Able Political Process Wealth Democracy Rights Progress Example Vote Slave Former Dimensions Afghanistan Domain Flawed 1960s

Author:Noam Chomsky

“It is quite difficult to establish a clear-cut cause-and-effect relationship, as the causes are manifold and closely connected. It is simply not correct to link the level of democracy to prosperity. It is absolutely clear that the economic wealth of Saudi Arabia exceeds the performance of the Czech Republic. But apparently democracy is quite stable in the Czech Republic, which cannot be said about Saudi Arabia. As we delve into the past, we must not forget about the existing model of society.”