#democracy

Ehren wir die Freiheit. Arbeiten wir für den Frieden. Halten wir uns an das Recht. Dienen wir unseren inneren Maßstäben der Gerechtigkeit." [Ansprache am 8. Mai 1985 in der Gedenkstunde im Plenarsaal des Deutschen Bundestages] ↗

— Richard von Weizsäcker

#equality #freedom #goals #justice #law

Secrecy begets tyranny. ↗

— Robert A. Heinlein

#freedom #freedom

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#dictatorship #fear #freedom #government #independent-thought

Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us." [The One Un-American Act, Speech to the Author's Guild Council in New York, on receiving the 1951 Lauterbach Award (December 3, 1952)] ↗

— William O. Douglas

#first-amendment #freedom #freedom-of-speech #freedom-of-thought #liberty

Corporations are not legal “persons” with constitutional rights and freedoms of their own, but legal fictions that we created and must therefore control. ↗

— Kalle Lasn

#democracy #freedom

Freedom, democracy, and socialism can only ever exist together; it is impossible to have any one without the other two. ↗

— Michel Templet

#politics #socialism #freedom

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#democracy #funny #humour #politics #revolution

When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure. ↗

— Alexander Hamilton

#government-leadership #courage

There are many countries but few nations. We are committed to building Nigeria into a most desirable nation to live ↗

— Fela Durotoye

#democracy #leadership #leadership-development #nations #nigeria

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.' ↗

— Isaac Asimov

#elite #elitism #elitist #voter #voting