Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.
We should insist that governments receiving American aid live up to standards of accountability and transparency, and we should support countries that embrace market reforms, democracy, and the rule of law.
The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.
Jazz is about freedom within discipline. Usually a dictatorship like in Russia and Germany will prevent jazz from being played because it just seemed to represent freedom, democracy and the United States.
We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.
The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control - 'indoctrination', we might say - exercised through the mass media.
Democracy, it appears, is a bit chancy. But its chances also depend on what we do ourselves.
Well, one of the first things is to restore the rule of law, to place the government back under the cage of law. Another thing is to stop falling for the myth of democracy.
We know that if we're going to remain economically competitive in the world, and viable as a civic democracy, that we're going to have to get more people educated to higher levels.
Let the people decide whom to vote for, who has more authority. And only people, only our citizens, are able to place the final emphasis, voting for this or that person or political force, or rejecting it. That's democracy.
Democracy cannot be a plaything for the capital cities. It has to infiltrate every nook and cranny in the country, including the village.
The elections that have taken place in these countries are a reflection of the lure of Democracy, and the resilience of our men and women in uniform who helped bring freedom to many who never knew what the word truly meant.
Black Lives Matter has no more to do with black issues than Students for a Democratic Society had to do with democracy. They are means to an end, and they use the black population as sacrifices for their goals.
Our constitutional liberties shall not be sacrificed in our search for greater security, for that is what our enemies and all enemies of freedom and democracy hope to achieve.
Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy - which many believe goes hand in hand with it - will be dead as well.
In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.
My door will always be open to those who genuinely renounce violence and seek peaceful accommodation into our nascent democracy.
Democracy in China is like Viagra; no such thing as free elections.
All the blood is drained out of democracy - it dies - when only half the population votes.
Democracies don't fight each other. Terrorists don't tend to come from places where they feel like they have recourse in a political system.
We're not a democracy.
The risk of a terrorist victory is greater when in fighting terror, democracy betrays its own essence.
Everything has to be done to build some sort of international democracy. We've seen only the tiniest beginnings of that.
No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
We learned in World War II that no single nation holds a monopoly on wisdom, morality or right to power, but that we must fight for the weak and promote democracy.
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.
Everywhere in the world, we're aware that democracy has incredible flaws and that the word has been used, especially in the United States, to wage wars.
It's in the interest of the U.S. to maintain a strong democracy in Colombia.
The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.
Peace should be understood in a human way - in a broad social, political and economic way. Peace is threatened by unjust economic, social and political order, absence of democracy, environmental degradation and absence of human rights.
In order every one in our homeland learns principles of democracy and the peaceful transition of power, and in order to stabilize and develop multiple choices in democratic practice.
Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship, rests on a shared understanding of limits.
Democracy - or any improvement on it - will rest on the layman's right to criticize. His criticism will be often - very often - damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate.
