#democracy

But democrats are seldom welcome on planets run by totalitarian governments, and scarcely more welcome on planets where anarchy prevails--this is due to the very nature of democracy, the only practical compromise between totalitarianism and anarchy. ↗

— Christopher Stasheff

#democracy #totalitarianism #nature

Everything is argued over in this world. Apart from only one thing that is not argued over. Nobody argues about democracy. Democracy is there as if it was some sort of saint in the altar from whom miracles are no longer expected. But it’s there as a reference. A reference. Democracy. And no-one attends to the matter that the democracy in which we live is a democracy taken captive, conditioned, amputated. Because the power..the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to remove a government that we do not like and replace it with another one that perhaps we might like in the future. Nothing else. But the big decisions are taken in a different sphere, and we all know which one that is. The big international financial organisations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organisations, the World Banks, the OECDs. All..not one of these entities is democratic. And so, how can we keep talking about democracy, if those who effectively govern the world are not chosen democratically by the people? Who chooses the representatives of each country in those organisations? Your respective peoples? No. Where then is the democracy? ↗

— José Saramago

#respect

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. ↗

— King Abdullah II

#broad #class #coming #democracy #democratic

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe. ↗

— Madeleine Albright

#children #czechoslovakia #democracy #europe #free

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. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#course #dead #democracy #else #everything

The better the information it has, the better democracy works. Silence and secrecy are never good for it. ↗

— Kate Adie

#democracy #good #information #never #secrecy

Taiwan is a budding democracy, and the people have participated in multi-party democratic elections since 1996. ↗

— Todd Akin

#democracy #democratic #elections #participated #people

The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness which the ambitious call, and the ignorant believe to be liberty. ↗

— Fisher Ames

#believe #call #democracy #ignorant #known

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. ↗

— Aristotle

#democracy #men #property #rulers

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal. ↗

— Aristotle

#any #arises #because #claim #democracy