2,003 Quotes About Democracy

Those who believe that liberal democracy and the free market can be defended by the force of law and regulation alone, without an internalised sense of duty and morality, are tragically mistaken.

It's almost hard to imagine anything more undemocratic than the view that political officials should not debate American wars in public, but only express concerns 'privately with the administration.' That's just a small sliver of Johnson's radicalism: replacing Feingold in the Senate with Ron Johnson would be a civil liberties travesty analogous to the economic travesty from, say, replacing Bernie Sanders with Lloyd Blankfein.

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.

In a civilized society, the government's foremost duty is to ensure equal distribution of essentials of life, and the citizens' foremost duty is to share the resources available to them with those without.

Limited period basic income (provided to those in need) can strengthen the preexisting welfare system in its efforts to empower the people and invoke equality, whereas universal basic income will only weaken the fabric of society and create deeper disparities.

A healthy, sane and sustainable society is where the state is responsible to support the people, but not to such an extent that the people become reliant on the state, and where the people are capable of taking care of themselves with minimum support from the state.

I would rather be ruled by people who think they're going to fry in Hell forever if they rule me poorly, than by people for whom I'm merely a convenient economic siphon who can be milked like a cow.

The future belongs to the socialism which is democratic, to the democracy which is socialist.

Socialism and democracy are not identical, but they are simply different expressions of the same principle; they belong together, supplement each other, and one can never be incompatible with the other. Socialism without democracy is pseudo-socialism, just as democracy without socialism is pseudo-democracy. The democratic state is the only feasible form for a society organized on a socialist basis.