Every economy exists, no matter what the level of democracy, has elements of crony capitalism. It's - given human nature and given the democratic structures, which we all, I assume, adhere to, that is an inevitable consequence.
Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens, but by their own choice, Puerto Rico is not a state. The relationship has worked well for Puerto Rico - which has strengthened its culture, language and economy - and for the United States, which has helped create in Puerto Rico a showcase of democracy and prosperity for all of Latin America.
It's fair to say that, for much of my lifetime, New Zealand certainly was a property-owning democracy and working people, ordinary people, had assets.
If you rely on the media for your information, to educate yourself about the candidates and what issues are facing the country, then you get just part of the equation. I think it's important that we as citizens of this democracy take the responsibility to get as much information as possible before we go into the voting booth.
The government may change faces from time to time, but it's not like we fight wars for democracy - we fight wars for capitalism and for oil.
I'm fed up with democracy. In a democracy, people vote for the mayors. I wanted to build a city where I will choose the citizens.
We're a robust democracy here. That's the wonderful thing about this country.
Elections are an enduring spectacle of free India, and have provided foreign journalists with the opportunity to remind the world that India remains the world's largest democracy.
We can no longer allow multinationals to parade as agents of progress and democracy in the newspapers, even as they subvert it at the workplace.
America had the message of freedom and democracy, but we haven't actually shown that to be what we do in the world. So I think that's a terrifying thing.
The Arab Spring showed that people are not going to wait for an American president to make good on his big talk about democracy and human rights; they are going to fight for those rights themselves and overthrow pro-American dictators who stand in their way.
Over the course of my life, I have made many transitions - most of them taking me further away from my Somali roots and steadily toward the enlightened mentality of Western democracy.
I gathered as much reading material about Aung San Suu Kyi and about Burma as I could. And I read every article and every book she had written. I also had 200 hours of footage of her to watch. I tried to discover who were her heroes and where he desire and strength to pursue democracy in a non-violent fashion came from.
It's just that to a lot of British people George Bush represents the worst of all things American. He's the right-wing Christian crusader, the toxic Texan who refused Kyoto, the poll-cheat eel who undermined democracy on the back of something called 'chads,' a notion we've never entirely grasped.
Part of science is the questioning of authority, absolute freedom of ideology. The Soviets did some very good science, but when science ran into ideology, it had trouble. Science flourishes best in a democracy.
Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.
Democracy is like a totalitarian.
I am no historian, but Hungary is a country which has never known democracy - and by that, I mean not a democratic political system, but an organic process which has mobilised the entire country's society. In the case of Hungary, this development was blocked by the growth of the Ottoman empire in the 16th century.
Amnesty International continues to report that extra judicial tortures and murders continue. This is not democracy that we are exporting to Mexico, and this is certainly not what the Mexican workers signed up for.
I don't think Iraq could be transformed overnight into a democracy. How can you take a country that doesn't have any kind of tradition of democracy, where its people have been brutalized and repressed for decades, and suddenly impose Jeffersonian ideals?
If I were a capitalist I would not give my employees health insurance with no deductible, which I do, including dental, and paid pregnancy leave. That's not called capitalism, that's called being a Christian and someone who believes in democracy, so that everyone should get a fair slice of the pie.
I think one of the brilliant parts of our democracy is how resilient it is. We are each allowed to have our own beliefs and, as long as we follow the rule of law, we can express them however we'd like. This is a unique characteristic of the best democracies and one I value tremendously.
The biggest lie of all is that capitalism is democracy. We have no way of understanding democracy outside of the market, just as we have no understanding of how to understand freedom outside of market values.
If you're going to spend most of your time in your democracy figuring out how to get oil by intervening into other people's countries and insuring that you follow it with military might, we think there's an alternative. Which would be renewable energy.
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.
Change comes with both fear and some pain. Those two ingredients create mistrust, misunderstanding and misinformation. Such is the process of democracy.
Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.
At the time of the Civil War, there were six democracies in the face of the planet. Today, there's 120 and they've been inspired by the American exceptionalism.
The issue is whether the ultimate civil authority of the United States can tolerate actions in contempt of constitutional lines of authority. Any lessening of civil power over military power must inevitably lead away from democracy.
For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights.
France is a pretty stable democracy, but incidents occur. And I was pleased to have police accompaniment.
Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.
I draw a very clear distinction between populism and democracy.
The American public should simply accept no distractions. In our democracy, it is our duty to hold our elected leaders accountable. We do it at the ballot box.
The Sandinistas are dedicated Communists, and if they are going to make a compromise with democracy, it's going to be under pressure.
