Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.

The rejection of Western democracy derives from the same rejection of secularism but was further sharpened by the Saudi Arabian establishment’s aversion to democracy’s subversive streak and the threat it posed to the Saudi monarchy...

[The Internet] affects democracy… As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided...

[…] there can be no a priori moral framework in a modern democracy […]

We Chileans have to be able to understand that in a democracy institutions must function freely and with sovereignty.

It’s healthy in a democracy to have several candidates in a primary. We’re promoting democracy abroad, and we should be practicing it here.

If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want...

A funny thing happened to the First Amendment on its way to the public forum. According to the Supreme Court, money is now speech and corporations are now people. But when real people without money...

Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating.

I believe in a relatively equal society, supported by institutions that limit extremes of wealth and poverty. I believe in democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law. That makes me a liberal, and I’m...

People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.All men have the right to live their own...

Nothing conceivable is so petty, so insipid, so crowded with paltry interests, in one word, so anti-poetic, as the life of a man in the United States.

We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.

Democracy derailed is democracy denied.

My definition of democracy is – A form and a method of Government whereby revolutionary changes in the social life are brought about without bloodshed. That is the real test. It is perhaps the severest...

People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.

The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.

What we’ve seen is the loss of democracy as we know it, … It’s poor public policy that somebody loses their seat based upon a fraud.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

The true nature of a democracy is its ability to say yes when even the powerful say no

One of the arguments that authoritarian governments use to ward off the call for greater political freedom is to argue that American-style democracy is no guarantee of good policy…. Over the years, I’ve grown used...

In a room wherepeople unanimously maintaina conspiracy of silence,one word of truthsounds like a pistol shot.

If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if...

He’s coming here to strengthen a military regime that claims it is establishing democracy. Who is he trying to fool?

Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power...

They shouldnt teach their immigrants’ kids all about democracy unless they mean to let them have a little bit of it, it ony makes for trouble. Me and the United States is dissociating our alliance...

No, young man. What you see is hell with the lid taken off.” — Mother Jones

Wir sind das Volk!”Dieser Satz hat uns gelehrt, dass wir, wenn wir unserer Sehnsucht glauben und ihr vertrauen, die Angst verlieren können. Eine Angst, die willfährige Dienerin jeder Art von nicht legitimierter Herrschaft ist, die...

Nothing—not even the US Army—more threatens the future of a democratic, pluralistic and (dare we wish, secular) Iraq than the political ascendancy of Islamic fascists like Al Sadr.

persons” with constitutional rights and freedoms of their own, but legal fictions that we created and must therefore control.

If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.

And is Saudi Arabia a democracy, or Kuwait?

Here’s what we’re not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught...

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the major international question was the relation between Islam and democracy.

Inflation is bringing us true democracy. For the first time in history, luxuries and necessities are selling at the same price.

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

The candidates also know we have experience of democracy, those of us who live here. We know what to listen for. We know if anything they’re saying makes sense. So they come here and they...

We expected that with electoral democracy there would be a trickle down of positive effects. That did not happen.

As our technological capacities continue to increase and our environment becomes ever more fragile and endangered, we find that changes to the Earth that used to take ten thousand years now take a fraction of...

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Senegal needs to free itself, to rediscover its democracy.

Der Endzweck des Staates ist […] im Grund die Freiheit.

The foremost, or indeed the sole condition, which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love...

Here we are in the midst of a revolution in Israeli politics. Our great national leader is crippled?and there is no crisis. Power is passed quietly. Our enemies don’t stir. Our stock market barely moves....

Democracy should always be viewed with a philosophical perspective rather than a political one, because after all democracy was born to a philosopher and murdered by a politician.

As a veteran, I know firsthand the satisfaction there is in defending the democracy you so strongly believe in, but I can also attest to the trauma encountered from combat on the battlefield.

Be assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in...

When there is liberty, you expect a higher degree of freedom and not human rights abuse.

Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy.

With the Chinese there are no strings attached. They don’t talk to you about democracy or reform. They give money, the Saudis give oil and there are no hidden agendas. The Saudis find those kinds...