Quotes tagged ‘Democracy’

“Let's say all you ever knew were apples. Apples, apples, more apples. You might think apples were pretty good, even if you got a rotten one once in a while. But then, one day, there's an orange. And now you can make a decision. Do you want an apple, or do you want an orange? That's democracy.”

— Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor, Jim McAllister, Matthew Broderick, imdb.com

“Abbie Hoffman: In 1861, Lincoln said in his inaugural address: 'When the people shall grow weary of their constitutional right to amend their government, they shall exert their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow that government.' And if Lincoln had given that speech in Lincoln Park last…”

— Aaron Sorkin, Abbie Hoffman, Sacha Baron Cohen, imdb.com

“Richard Schultz: Do you have contempt for your government? Abbie Hoffman: I think the institutions of our democracy are wonderful things, that right now are populated by some terrible people.”

— Aaron Sorkin, Abbie Hoffman, Sacha Baron Cohen, imdb.com

“Democracy requires a good challenge, and it does not always arrive in soft tones.”

— Judith Butler, newstatesman.com

“I don't believe that government is good at picking technology, particularly technology that is changing. By the time you get it done and go through democracy, it's so outdated.”

— Mike Bloomberg, inc.com

“The danger Donald Trump and the alt-right pose to this nation isn’t hypothetical or exaggerating. It’s real. The core values is this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that makes America America is at stake. Folks, everyone knows who Donald Trump is. Even the people wh…”

— Joe Biden, rev.com

“No matter how old or young you are, you’ve never seen anything like this in your lifetime. We’re being reminded every day there’s nothing guaranteed about democracy, not even here in America. We have to constantly earn it. We have to protect it. We have to fight for it. I believe America is in, as L…”

— Joe Biden, rev.com

“What this president doesn’t understand is that like every other nation on earth, we’re unable to define what constitutes America by religion, by ethnicity, or by tribe. You can’t do it. America’s an idea. An idea stronger than any army, bigger than any ocean, more powerful than any dictator or tyran…”

— Joe Biden, rev.com

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

— H. L. Mencken, amazon.com

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has…”

— H. L. Mencken, amazon.com

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

— H. L. Mencken, amazon.com

“Civilization, in fact, grows more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them ima…”

— H. L. Mencken, amazon.com

“Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule—and both commonly succeed, and are right.”

— H. L. Mencken, amazon.com

“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage.”

— H. L. Mencken, amazon.com

“Yesterday I spent the day with the D-day veteran Charles Norman Shay at Omaha beach. It was a day I will never forget. Not only because of the unimaginable bravery and sacrifices made by those who gave their lives to defend the freedom and democracy of the world. But also because they managed to do…”

— Greta Thunberg, youtube.com

“We were one vote shy from bringing down Medicare eligibility to 55. One vote shy. I'm going to fight for that one vote when I'm running in 2020, because what would that have done?”

— Cory Booker, npr.org

“The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You go…”

— Oliver Stone, Stanley Weiser, Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas, imdb.com

“I say we do the same thing to Trump that the Republicans did to Obama. Don’t settle. Don’t negotiate. Don’t back down.”

— Marcus Dalzine, Neil Gross, John Benjamin Hickey, imdb.com

“At the bottom of all of our terrified souls, we know, that democracy is a dying giant, a sick, sick, dying, decaying political concept, riling in it's final pain. I don't mean that the United States is finished as a world power. The United States is the richest, the most powerful, the most advanced…”

— Paddy Chayefsky, Howard Beale, Peter Finch, imdb.com

“This is a defining moment of truth for this country and for every single one of us. The challenges that we face right now, the interconnected crises in our economy, our democracy and our climate have never been greater.”

— Beto O'Rourke, npr.org