Democracy Quotes
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The lesson of history is clear: democracy always wins in the end.
-- Marjorie Kellyif we wish to accomplish in the next 15 years what we failed to accomplish in the last 15, we would do well to focus on democratizing structures of power. That means imagining, and then creating, economic democracy.
-- Marjorie KellyDemocracy is about two things. First, it is about purpose. In the political realm, it's about an overriding concern for the common good. In the economic realm, it's about having the common good trump the narrow self-interest of the financial elite. It's about broadening corporate purpose from serving shareholders to serving stakeholders, and releasing executives from the destructive mandate to maximize shareholder gain at any cost. Second, democracy is about structures that bring this purpose to life. It's not about separating good corporations from bad, but about shaping the system forces that act on all corporations. It's about consciously crafting new democratic system structures, structures of voice, structures of decision making, structures of conflict resolution, structures of accountability.
-- Marjorie KellyWe are experiencing a unique convergence of forces, not only the forces of scandal, but the forces of change. We can use this moment to take corporate social responsibility to the next level, the level of economic democracy. We can become a new founding generation, completing the design in the economic realm that our forefathers began in the political realm. Instead of chasing one form of corporate wrongdoing at a time, we can put in place enduring structures of justice, effective structures of checks and balances. For it is only in this way that we can truly safeguard the common good, not only for today, but for generation after generation to come.
-- Marjorie Kelly
"The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth... In a world struggling in violence and dishonesty, the further development of non-violence - not only as a philosophy but as a way of life, as a force on the streets, in the market squares, outside the missile bases, inside the chemical plants and inside the war industry - becomes one of the most urgent priorities."
-- Petra Kelly
We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
-- John F. KennedyOur labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
-- John F. Kennedy"America now stands as the world's foremost power. We should be proud: Not since the age of the Romans have one people achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans; we do not seek an empire. We are Americans, trustees of a vision and a heritage that commit us to the values of democracy and the universal cause of human rights."
-- Senator John Kerry
"Democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as the only road to sustained economic development and social justice."
-- Kim Dae-jung
the anti-war movement should turn itself into a pro-democracy movement
-- Naomi Klein
Students should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up; they should have the chance to live in one today.
-- Alfie Kohn
The proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
-- David Korten
"The ideas and principles of democracy should not be limited to politics, but must pervade all areas of social life."
-- Bruno Kreisky
We, as citizens or members of people's organisations, can preserve and nourish basic principles needed for long-term efforts aimed at transforming a totalitarian and war-torn society into a democratic one."
-- Katarina Kruhonja
* freedom rings resoundingly in a democracy each time we speak freely.
-- Dennis Kucinich
Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian regime and replace it with a democratic one is through violent means. I would like to set the precedent of political change through political settlement, not through violence.
-- Aung San Suu Kyi
"No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy."
-- Frances Moore Lappe
We’ve come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace with itself.
-- John R. Lewis
“We want harmonious development, ... We should work together for more democratic and law-based international relations, and a harmonious environment in which countries respect one another, treat one another as equals, and different cultures can emulate and interchange with each other.”
-- Li Zhaoxing
* “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”
-- Abraham Lincoln
Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.
-- Rosa Luxemburg
We need now to build a culture of geniune nonviolence and real democracy.
-- Mairead Corrigan Maguire
"Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing."
-- Archibald MacLeish, American poet, public official (1892-1982)
"I have tremendous confidence in the capacity of the poor to transform not only their own lives but also to build a just, humane, and democratic society."
-- Ruth Manorama
"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 (1880-1959)"America: Socializing the risks, Privatizing the profits, Putting business in the democracy, Taking the democracy out of the business."
-- Christopher Masterjohn
Ensuring the access of all citizens to government information and to essential information for human development is a must for every democratic society.
-- Koïchiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director-GeneralDictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts twox-way traffic.
-- Albert Moravia
We must construct a new set of values and attitudes to replace the culture of war which, for centuries, has been influencing the course of civilization. Winning peace means the triumph of our pledge to establish, on a democratic basis, a new social framework of tolerance and generosity from which no one will feel excluded.
-- Federico Mayor
"One cannot have a trade union or a democratic election without freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby people choose and remove their rulers, there is no method of securing human rights against the state. No democracy without human rights, no human rights without democracy, and no trade union rights without either. That is our belief; that is our creed."
-- George Meany
"Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples."
-- Rigoberta Menchu
I don't accept armed struggle. Maybe it was the way in the '50s and '60s, but we want a democratic revolution...
-- Evo Morales
The Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing sustaining and powerful movement whose interest is to prove that religion has a healing side as well as a killing side, and that democracy is the consequence of conscience
-- Bill Moyers“I believe democracy requires a ‘sacred contract’ between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works.”
-- Bill MoyersThe quality of democracy and the quality of journalism are deeply entwined.
-- Bill MoyersAn unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.
-- Bill Moyers"Neither democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence."
-- Lewis Mumford, American social philosopher (1895-1990)
The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.
-- A. J. Muste
Democracy Quotes
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DEMOCRACY
HERO PIX
Roger Nash Baldwin | Noam Chomsky | Norman Cousins |
John Edwards| Mohandas Gandhi | Barbara Marx Hubbard |
Abraham Lincoln | Frances Perkins | Amartya SenDemocracy Day - October 18
