Democracy is fatal for the arts; it leads only to chaos or the achievement of new and lower common denominators of quality.
The Greek city-states politicised citizen and subject, creating institutions that were way ahead of anything in China or India. The politicians of antiquity exercised a political and military, if not economic, hegemony on the culture as a whole. The idea of democracy was first born and practised here.
I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.
Our leaders pay lip service to the freedoms that democracy provides while actually supporting an economic structure that imprisons its citizens under more and more debt.
Democracy just isn't working any more; without sanity at its heart, it is becoming a most unique and fiendish tyranny.
The worst thing that can happen in a democracy - as well as in an individual's life - is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.
China more than two milleniums ago had already considered the idea of democracy, but at that time she could not put it into operation.
Until I see an Arab country, a Muslim country, with a democracy, I won't understand how anyone can have a problem with how they're treated.
There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy.
Democracy has many enemies, and the terrorist is only one of them.
How have relations with Iran and Belarus benefited Venezuela? We are interested in countries that have democracies, that respect human rights, that we have an affinity with. What affinity do we have with Iran?
So I think democracy, in the long-term, in our countries will survive if it comes to be associated with leadership, will not survive if democracy plus media brings to us more and more followship rather than leadership.
History is full of examples of regimes that were oppressing at home and aggressive abroad, and I can't think of too many liberal democracies engaging in counterfeiting, drug running, missile proliferation, and just about any other illegal activity you can think of as North Korea does.
There is no, and cannot be, any situation in which we don't respect the law and the judiciary. It is unacceptable to attack the courts; criticism is allowed, but attacks are not. It shakes the basis of our democracy.
To say Donald Trump would be a disaster for our country, our democracy, and our future would be doing a grave disservice to the word 'disaster.'
For me, democracy must deliver a better life for the people.
Of all the principles which constitute Liberal Democracy, internationalism is the clearest, the most distinctive, and the one with the longest history.
Well, you know, too much democracy is a sort of sad thing.
Democracy, if it meant what our forefathers said, that would be great, but unfortunately it's been corrupted by this funding and funding of campaigns. There's a much better way to do it. There could be a small amount of money given by every taxpayer to be dedicated to candidates.
Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.
How do you deliver democracy to a country? You don't do it down the barrel of a gun. That's not how you deliver it.
I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.
We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life.
Collective freedom is one devoid of material bondage and one that supports the institutions necessary for democracy.
Israel, an embattled democracy, has been fighting terrorism for over 100 years.
In 2005, I founded the Democratic Pacific Union, an international organization of 28 democratic countries to promote democracy, peace and prosperity in the Pacific region.
Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone.
The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.
We have been deformed by educational and religious institutions that treat us as members of an audience instead of actors in a drama, so we become adults who treat democracy as a spectator sport.
Lawyers have rendered immense sacrifices for the restoration of democracy and free judiciary, and their role in this regard cannot be ignored.
Democracy literally means the power of people. Democracy is not about politics, it is about the people.
American democracy in the past has always been known for its large middle class and its relatively few very wealthy people and very few very poor people, but that is gone to today and the middle class is shrinking.
No one is pro-abortion.
The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.
A mature society understands that at the heart of democracy is argument.
The fact that free men persist in the search for the truth is the essential difference between Communism and Democracy.
