Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
—George Bernard Shaw
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!
—H. L. Mencken
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick
The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself… The act of voting is in itself the defining moment.
—Laurence J. Peter
Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible.
—Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet
Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
—Mogens Jallberg
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
—Thomas Jefferson
A republican government is slow to move, yet once in motion it's momentum becomes irresistible.
—Tom Stoppard
It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
—Will Rogers
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
—Unknown
Television is the first truly democratic culture—the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
—Clive Barnes
I learned to believe in freedom, to glow when the word democracy was used, and to practice slavery from morning to night. I learned it the way all of my Southern people learn it: by closing door after door until one's mind and heart and conscience are blocked off from each other and from reality.
—Lillian Smith
Whether the mask is labeled Fascism, Democracy, or Dictatorship of the Proletariat, our great adversary remains the Apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier or the battle lines,… but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this Apparatus, and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.
—Simone Weil
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and
the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under
the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and
democracy?
—Mahatma Gandhi