2,003 Quotes About Democracy

In proportion that property is small, the danger of misusing the franchisee is great.

I think the secret is that it belongs to all of us - to us of the West. We've learned to think in its terms, and to live in its laws. It's given us almost everything that our world has that is worthwhile. Truth, straight thinking, freedom, beauty. It's our second language, our second line of thought, our second country. We all have our own country -- and Greece.

Power creates temptations, and that is true even for the smallest increments of power: the power of the building inspector, of the customs official, of the cop at the traffic stop. It took a lot of work by a lot of people over a long time to build even America's highly imperfect standards of public integrity. Undoing that work would be a far easier task. Corruption is the resting state of pubic affairs; integrity a painstaking, unceasing struggle against cultural inertia and political gravity.

If we don't stand up for others when they're persecuted, we lose the right to complain when it's done to us.

The West has no idea of the human and economic costs imposed on it by the mere existence of dictatorship in the world.

Sometimes," Helena continued, "I have a terrible dream of the future. Not now, but presently, people may forget their loyalty to their kings and emperors and take power for themselves. Instead of letting one victim bear this frightful curse they will take it all on themselves, each one of them. Think of the misery of a whole world possessed of Power without Grace.

Democracy is not just a system, it is an idea that we all have value.

Authority is a responsible form of power; it should be given to responsible man.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.