2,003 Quotes About Democracy

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.

[A]s long as individuals are compelled to rent themselves on the market to those who are willing to hire them, as long as their role in production is simply that of ancillary tools, then there are striking elements of coercion and oppression that make talk of democracy very limited, if meaningful.

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.

We don’t vote for people because they are the exact embodiment of our values, but because they are likely to be the most responsive to them.

[C]apitalism--democracy's sidekick

A democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism.

America is a fascist country because it is run by private markets, private banks, private corporations and private dynastic families, i.e. by all the entities that control America’s capital. The government of America is wholly owned by private interests, and exclusively serves those private interests. The people have no power. Every four years, they elect a stooge who pretends he’s the tribune of the people, while making no difference at all.

The ignorance, prejudices, and groupthink of an educated elite are still ignorance, prejudice, and groupthink—and for those with one percent of the knowledge in a society to be guiding or controlling those with the other 99 percent is as perilous as it is absurd.

[T]hat we collectively value the 'growth' of capital as the final purpose of our economy is not reducible to the reigning ideology of neoliberal capitalism. Rather, the purpose of our economy is beyond democratic deliberation under any form of capitalism, since the defining purpose of capital accumulation is built into how we produce our social wealth in the first place.