DEMOCRACY
QUOTES
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There
can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
-- Ralph Nader
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The essence of globalization is a subordination
of human rights, of labor rights, consumer, environmental
rights, democracy rights, to the imperatives of
global trade and investment.
-- Ralph Nader
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”Man's
capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's
inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.”
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
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I always believe that ultimately, if people are
paying attention, then we get good government
and good leadership. And when we get lazy, as
a democracy and civically start taking shortcuts,
then it results in bad government and politics.
-- Barack Obama
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"This
leads to a question -- if a great many people
are for a certain project, is it necessarily right?
If the vast majority is for it, is it even more
certainly right? This, to be sure, is one of the
tricky points of democracy. The minority often
turns out to be right, and though one believes
in the efficacy of the democratic process, one
has also to recognize that the demand of the many
for a particular project at a particular time
may mean only disaster."
-- Frances Perkins
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"A
community is democratic only when the humblest
and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil,
economic, and social rights that the biggest and
most powerful possess."
-- A. Philip
Randolph
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"'If
democracy and self-rule are the fundamentals, then why
should people give up these rights when they enter their
workplace? In politics we fight like tigers for freedom,
for the right to elect our leaders, for freedom of movement,
choice of residence, choice of what work to pursue -
control of our lives, in short. And then we wake up
in the morning and go to work, and all those rights
disappear. We no longer insist on them. And so for most
of the day we return to feudalism. That is what capitalism
is - a version of feudalism in which capital replaces
land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy
remains. And so we still hand over our lives' labor,
under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work....
'So. We must challenge. It is time. If self-rule is
a fundamental value, if simple justice is a value, then
they are values everywhere, including in the workplace
where we spend so much of our lives'...."
-- Kim Stanley Robinson
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“The motivating force of the theory of a Democratic
way of life is still a belief that as individuals
we live cooperatively, and, to the best of our ability,
serve the community in which we live..."
-- Eleanor
Roosevelt |
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"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the
people tolerate the growth of private power to
a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic
state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism
- ownership of government by an individual, by
a group, or by any other controlling private power.
Among us today a concentration of private power
without equal in history is growing." -- Franklin
D. Roosevelt
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Democracy
cannot succeed unless those who express their
choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real
safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt
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The
only sure bulwark of continuing liberty is a government
strong enough to protect the interests of the people,
and a people strong enough and well enough informed
to maintain its sovereign control over the government.
-- Franklin
D. Roosevelt
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“A great democracy must be progressive or it will
soon cease to be a great democracy”
-- Theodore
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