Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.

Here we introduce the nation’s first great communications monopolist, whose reign provides history’s first lesson in the power and peril of concentrated control over the flow of information. Western Union’s man was one Rutherford B....

It’s an election year. We would prefer that voters didn’t use common sense.

India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of...

It was not man who implanted in himself what is infinite and the love of what is immortal: those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in...

Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.

Stand here, he thought, and count the lighted windows of a city. You cannot do it. But behind each yellow rectangle that climbs, one over another, to the sky – under each bulb – down...

Democracies should be a delirium of choices – more options, not fewer; more avenues to travel, not fewer.

Democracy: stored up in heaven; but unhappily has not yet been communicated to us.

The rich run a global system that allows them to accumulate capital and pay the lowest possible price for labour. The freedom that results applies only to them. The many simply have to work harder,...

The youth of Nepal have awakened in great numbers, we will continue our battle on the streets against monarchy. It’s democracy that we strive for; victory no matter what. So support our movement.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by...

Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared,...

Anything that helps enhance democracy to give average people a voice is a noble and good use of technology.

Youths are our arrows to the future.

Darwin did not know what a bitter satire he wrote on mankind … when he showed that free competition, the struggle for existence, which the economists celebrate as the highest historical achievement, is the normal...

Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits

The US exports democracy, hence there being very little left for Americans

Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because...

The people who lead us are of us. We put them in office and we can take them out. America proves that the people can govern themselves.

The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.

We grew up under dictatorship, wanted democracy and were quickly given responsibility. That sharpens the view for risks, but also for chances.

In its current form, globalization cannot be sustained. Democratic societies will not support it. Authoritarian leaders will fear to impose it.

When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.

[Rumsfeld said he does not] known much about … But he is no friend of democracy. He’s no friend of freedom. He is a person who is very much supportive of the current ayatollahs, who...

You get fifteen Democrats in a room, and you get twenty opinions

It was an idea that made the crucial difference between British and Iberian America – an idea about the way people should govern themselves. Some people make the mistake of calling that idea ‘democracy’ and...

The hushing of the criticism of honest opponents is a dangerous thing. It leads some of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so...

We do not get to vote on who owns what, or on relations in factory and so on, for all this is deemed beyond the sphere of the political, and it is illusory to expect...

As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. I am afraid that’s how it works in a democracy.

Sometimes it’s better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.

Open Everything’ is everything–it is our mind, our heart, our soul, our destiny.

In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance

Egypt was the first democracy in the Middle East. Women were unveiled in the 1920s. Egypt is a country of civilization, of culture. It shouldn’t be suffering.

Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any...

Islam and democracy can function together.

I think it is dangerous to confuse the idea of democracy with elections. Just because you have elections doesn’t mean you’re a democratic country. They’re a very vitally important part of a democracy. But there...

From leading the world into the age of democracy to spearheading the technological revolution, America has always been at the forefront of greatness.

We want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East...

karmic reassignment”) manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: ‘In different times,...

Iraq is part of a legitimate American effort not to have democracy everywhere but to have democracy somewhere.

We have been gradually finding out that there is more democracy in letting a committee or representative ten to details than in making everybody’s business nobody’s business.

We owe congratulations to the Iraqi people on achieving yet another step on their road to democracy …, … This is a remarkable story.

Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.

I think this project of democracy-building in Iraq has alarmed many authoritarian autocratic regimes in the region, … Many of them are counting on our failure, and they have not been helpful.

There is now the capacity to make tyranny total in America. Only law ensures that we never fall into that abyss—the abyss from which there is no return.

Man does not necessarily begin with despotism because he is barbarous, but very often finds his way to despotism because he is civilised. He finds it because he is experienced; or, what is often much...

It helped spread far and wide the basic values of freedom, democracy, equality, justice and peace, and promoted in a big way the awakening of the people of all countries, especially those of colonial and...

Israelis can be proud of the vibrant democracy that they have created, and I know that many Rhode Islanders share my deep appreciation for the close friendship between our two nations.

The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to...