Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous
old democracy quotes, democracy sayings, and democracy proverbs, collected over the years from a variety
of sources.
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.Winston Churchill
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Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!Benjamin Franklin
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Democracy works when people claim it as their own.BILL MOYERS
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Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.ALAN COREN
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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.E.B. WHITE
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.Henry Louis Mencken
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Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.Aristotle
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Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.Plato
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Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.Henry Louis Mencken
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Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights are not given. They are earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.Aung San Suu Kyi
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Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.Bertrand Russell
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Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.James Russell Lowell
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Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.Alexander Meiklejohn
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A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.Fisher Ames
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Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.Clement Atlee
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Democracy means not 'I am as good as you are' but 'You are as good as I am.Theodore Parker
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Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.Irving Kristol
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Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%.Thomas Jefferson
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Democracy is like a hobby horse: It will carry you nowhere unless you use your own legs.Herbert Samuel
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Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating.Ronald Reagan
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Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.Johnny Carson
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The ship of democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those on board.Grover Cleveland
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Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.Harry Emerson Fosdick
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Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.George Bernard Shaw
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Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.George Bernard Shaw
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Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it.Benjamin Lichtenberg
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Democracy is like a raft: It won't sink, but you will always have your feet wet.Russell B. Long
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Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave.Felix G. Rohatyn
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Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right.William Allen White
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The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.Edward Bellamy
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Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.Albert Camus
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In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.Norman Cousins
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I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.Mohandas K. Gandhi
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A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.Theodore Roosevelt
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Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.Abdoulaye Wade
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The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man.Woodrow Wilson
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In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.Carter Woodson
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Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.Abraham Lincoln
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Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy, imagination, and public spirit required of the individual.George C. Marshall
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Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.Franklin D. Roosevelt
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Democracy is supposed to give you a feeling of choice, like painkiller x and painkiller y. But they're both just aspirin.Gore Vidal
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Adultery is the application of democracy to love.H. L. Mencken
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Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it as the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.Dean Inge
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Democracy is an abuse of statistics.Jorge Luis Borges
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The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.Art Spander
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Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.John Simon
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Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.H.L. Mencken
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Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.Ronald Reagan
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Democracy is the power of equal votes for unequal minds.Charles I of England
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Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.Hans-Hermann Hoppe
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Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.Barrack Obama
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If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation will you prefer the grain to vote?Bertrand Russell
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Democracy reads well, but it doesn't act well.Bernard Shaw
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Representative government should be something for us to support rather than something to support us.Irvin S. Cobb
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We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths; this is our democratic privilege.Mark Twain
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Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.Mencken
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A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.Bertrand Russell
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If you want to understand democracy, spend less time in the library with Plato, and more time in the buses with people.Simeon Strunsky
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Democracy is ever eager for rapid progress, and the only progress which can be rapid is progress downhill.James Jeans
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Democracy is a word all public men use and none understand.Bernard Shaw
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The doctrine that the cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy is like saying that the cure of crime is more crime.Mencken
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Democracy is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles.E.B. White
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A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and unskilled labor.Aristotle
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Democracy is the last refuge of cheap misgovernment.Bernard Shaw
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Democracy is a form of government where you can always say what you like, and do what you're told.Evan Esar
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Government of the people and for the people never seems to get along with the people.Evan Esar
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Democracy is a ship of state whose officers try to steer a straight course in all directions.Evan Esar
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The virtue of a free government is that the more freedom you have, the less government you need to have.Evan Esar
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Democracy is a form of government whose citizens have complete freedom to choose which candidate they prefer to mess things up for them.Evan Esar
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Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.Robert Byrne
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Those who are too smart to engage in politics are punished by being governed by those who are dumber.Plato
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Politics is the gentle art of getting votes from the poor and campaign funds from the rich, by promising to protect each from the other.Oscar Ameringer
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An election is coming. Universal peace is declared and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.T.S. Eliot
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Politics are almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.Winston Churchill
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The office of government is not to confer happiness but to give men the opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.William Channing
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The impersonal hand of government can never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.Hubert Humphrey
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Human freedom is a complex, difficult and private thing. James Baldwin
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If we can liken life for a moment, to a furnace, the freedom is a fire which burns away illusion.James Baldwin
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The oppressed and the oppressor alike are robbed of freedom.Nelson Mandela
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I am not truly free if I am taking away someone else's freedom, just as surely as I am not free when my freedom is taken from me.Nelson Mandela