BILL MOYERS

Democracy works when people claim it as their own.

BILL MOYERS

Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

Robert Maynard Hutchins

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment".

unknown

Democracy: a government of the masses. Authority derived through mass meeting or any other form of direct expression. Results in mobocracy. Attitude toward property is communistic… negating property rights. Attitude toward law is that the will of a majority shall regulate, whether it is based upon deliberation or governed by passion, prejudices or impulse, without restraint or regard to consequences. Result is demogogism, license, agitation, discontent, anarchy

George Bernard Shaw

There is only one sort of genuine socialism, the democratic sort, by which I mean the organization of society for the benefit of the whole people".

Sidney Webb

inevitable outcome of Democracy is the control by the people themselves, not only of their own political organization, but through that, also of the main instruments of wealth production; the gradual substitution of organized cooperation for the anarchy of the competitive struggle… The economic side of the democratic ideal is, in fact, socialism itself".

Franklin D. Roosevelt

There is nothing mysterious about the foundations of a healthy and strong democracy. The basic things expected by our people of their political and economic system are simple. They are:

Equality of opportunity for youth and others;
Jobs for those who can work;
Security for those who need it;
The ending of the special privileges for the few;
The preservation of civil liberties for all;

The enjoyment of the fruits of scientific progress in a wider and constantly rising standard of living."

Thomas Benton

There are but two parties; there never have been but two parties… founded in the radical question, whether PEOPLE or PROPERTY shall govern? Democracy implies a government by the people… Aristocracy implies a government of the rich… and in these words are contained the sum of party distinctions".

Abraham Lincoln

Democracy is "government of, by and for the people".

John Jay

The people who own the country ought to govern it".

Samuel Adams

There never was a democracy that did not commit suicide".

William Godwin

Democracy restores to man a consciousness of his value, teaches him by the removal of authority and oppression to listen to the dictates of reason, gives him confidence to treat all other men as his fellow human beings, and induces him to regard them no longer as enemies against whom to be upon his guard, but as brethren whom it becomes him to assist".

Montesquieu

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy".

Spinoza

I believe democracy to be of all forms of government the most natural, and the most consonant with individual liberty. In it no one transfers his natural rights so absolutely that he has no further voice in affairs, he only hands it over to the majority of a society, whereof he is a unit. Thus all men remain, as they were in the state of nature, equals".

Pericles

Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the laws secure equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. "Neither is poverty a bar, for a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his conditions. There is no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private intercourses we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neighbor if he does what he likes; we do not give him sour looks which, though harmless, are not pleasant".

Aristotle

The real difference between democracy and oligarchy is poverty and wealth. Wherever men rule by reason of their wealth, whether they be few of many, that is an oligarchy, and where the poor rule, that is democracy".

Aldous Huxley

And it seems to me perfectly in the cards that there will be within the next generation or so a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing...a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda, brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods."

vTheodore Rooseelt

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day."

Howard Zinn

When people refuse to obey, then democracy comes alive."