Profoundly inspirational democracy quotes will get you through anything when the going gets tough and help you succeed in every aspect of life.
Famous Democracy Quotes
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. – Winston Churchill
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! – Benjamin Franklin
Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority. – Albert Camus
In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility. – Norman Cousins
Democracy needs support and the best support for democracy comes from other democracies. Democratic nations should come together in an association designed to help each other and promote what is a universal value – democracy. – Benazir Bhutto
Democracy is necessary to peace and to undermining the forces of terrorism. – Benazir Bhutto
The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual. – Edward Bellamy
If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost. – Aristotle
No one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. Rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. Young people must be included from birth. A society that cuts off from its youth severs its lifeline. – Kofi Annan
The USA was founded in the name of democracy, equality and individual freedom, but is failing to deliver the fundamental promise of protecting rights for all. – Amnesty International
Democracy is one of the most important principles for a better world. In its truest sense, a democracy is a community in which all members have an equal say in the running of that community. Unfortunately in reality, democratic societies have fallen short of this ideal. Nevertheless, because of its very nature, once a democracy is established, its citizens can work together to make their society more and more democratic, if they choose to do so. – Robert Alan Silverstein
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. – Will Rogers
Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them. – Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet
Men write many fine and plausible arguments in support of monarchy, but the fact remains that where every man has a voice, brutal laws are impossible. – Mark Twain
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. – Harry Emerson Fosdick
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
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. – H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time. – E. B. White
Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking. – Clement Atlee
Self-criticism is the secret weapon of democracy, and candor and confession are good for the public soul – Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open. – Gunther Grass
Democracy is the road to socialism. – Karl Marx
There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult – to begin a war and to end it – Alexis de Tocqueville
To make democracy work, we must be a notion of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain. – Louis L’Amour
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. – Henry Louis Mencken
Democracy don’t rule the world, You’d better get that in your head; This world is ruled by violence, But I guess that’s better left unsaid. – Bob Dylan
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. – Gustave Flaubert (1821 – 1880)
The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself…The act of voting is in itself the defining moment. – Jeff Melvoin
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. – Laurence J Peter (1919 – 1988)
In democracy it’s your vote that counts; In feudalism it’s your count that votes. – Mogens Jallberg
Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. – Sir Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965)
It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting. – Tom Stoppard (1937 – )
I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong. – Mohandas K. Gandhi
A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy. – Theodore Roosevelt
Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point. – Abdoulaye Wade
The whole purpose of democracy is that we may hold counsel with one another, so as not to depend upon the understanding of one man. – Woodrow Wilson
In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them. – Carter Woodson
Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people. – Abraham Lincoln
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
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democracy is supposed to give you a feeling of choice, like painkiller x and painkiller y. But they’re both just aspirin. – Gore Vidal
Adultery is the application of democracy to love. – H. L. Mencken
Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it as the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them. – Dean Inge
Democracy is an abuse of statistics. – Jorge Luis Borges
The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid. – Art Spander
Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant. – John Simon
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. – H.L. Mencken
Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. – Ronald Reagan
Democracy is the power of equal votes for unequal minds. – Charles I of England
Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else. – Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Democracy works when people claim it as their own. – BILL MOYERS
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear. – ALAN COREN
Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. – Aristotle
Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. – Plato
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage. – Henry Louis Mencken
Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights are not given. They are earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice. – Aung San Suu Kyi
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame. – Bertrand Russell
Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. James – Russell Lowell
Democracy is the art of thinking independently together. – Alexander Meiklejohn
A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. – Fisher Ames
Democracy means not ‘I am as good as you are’ but ‘You are as good as I am. – Theodore Parker
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity. – Irving Kristol
Democracy is 51% of the people taking away the rights of the other 49%. – Thomas Jefferson
Democracy is like a hobby horse: It will carry you nowhere unless you use your own legs. – Herbert Samuel
Democracy is not a fragile flower; still it needs cultivating. – Ronald Reagan
Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president. – Johnny Carson
The ship of democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those on board. – Grover Cleveland
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. – George Bernard Shaw
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. – George Bernard Shaw
Democracy: The state of affairs in which you consent to having your pocket picked, and elect the best man to do it. – Benjamin Lichtenberg
Democracy is like a raft: It won’t sink, but you will always have your feet wet. – Russell B. Long
Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave. – Felix G. Rohatyn
Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right. – William Allen White
