Through the inspiration of Vaclav's words, the courage of his dissidence and the integrity of his leadership, Czechoslovakia successfully transitioned from an authoritarian state to a free democracy at the heart of Europe.
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.
I think the good old British democracy should keep scrutinising and pressing to get the truth out.
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.
Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.
The unending chase for money, I believe, threatens to steal our democracy itself. I've used the word 'corrupting,' and I want to be very clear about it: I mean by it not the corruption of individuals, but a corruption of a system itself that all of us are forced to participate in against our will.
We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we're being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We've been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn't. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It's the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.
British chancellor is telling the rest of Europe it must abandon democracy. It's appalling.
In a well-functioning democracy, people frequently encounter topics and points of view that they did not specifically select but from which they learn. Those encounters can change minds and, even, the course of lives.
As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture, industry and education as our final goals, and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.
After each war there is a little less democracy to save.
My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.
It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power machinery with democracy. But then neither can political prisoners turn on the light in the cells of a dictatorship.
The Internet has brought democracy to so many other things. It's about time the Internet brought democracy to democracy.
The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.
I know this isn't a widespread view in the Anglo Saxon world, but I believe that much of the reconciliation between more centralized governance and the scope for democracy - democratic control - will be resolved through an even stronger role of the European Parliament.
In nation after nation, democracy has taken the place of autocracy.
The advanced levels which the democratic world has attained at the end of lengthy processes may have created the perception in the region that democracy is a distant concept; this perception can be addressed.
American democracy is greater with free speech and open dialogue.
Democracy is the common pursuit of mankind, and all countries must earnestly protect the democratic rights of the people.
Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.
The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it.
There is too much blind partisanship in Congress, which has blocked progress on critical issues. Too many members view compromise as weakness rather than the essence of our democracy. This has to end.
The 'democracy gap' in our politics and elections spells a deep sense of powerlessness by people who drop out, do not vote, or listlessly vote for the 'least worst' every four years and then wonder why after every cycle the 'least worst' gets worse.
The values and voices of democracy are silent. Either we have lost touch with those values or, no better, believe they need not or cannot be taught.
The history of our country is not the history of any other country in the world which is either practicing advanced democracy or struggling to lay the foundation for democracy.
While we enjoy the benefits of living in the greatest democracy in the world, we must be ever conscious of the fact that none of the achievements or freedoms enjoyed in America would be possible without the price that has been paid for by our servicemen and women.
Democracy without morality is impossible.
We've got to understand that the whole nature of the way American democracy guards its freedom has been changed.
The second 'Postal Service' album is threatening to become the 'Chinese Democracy' of indie rock. It will come out eventually, or maybe it won't.
I see corruption as a mortal enemy for young democracies.
You do not export democracy through the Defense Department or the Defense Secretary. You do it through trade agreements, through the Department of Commerce and favorable agreements with our friends and neighbors across the globe.
Let's not give the electoral process so much importance. We have to be cynical about it. Let's give importance to the real democracy that's constructed on a day-to-day basis. That's my hopeful perspective on it.
I can't emphasize how important free speech is to a liberal and free democracy.
