The fight for democracy has long been a pressing issue and today, I will share with you a list of the best anecdotes, sayings, and quotes about democracy!
Below, you will find different sayings about justice, equality, governance, and quotes about democracy that will surely awaken the fire in your heart and remind you what it is you stand for.
Side note:Β If there are more sayings and quotes about democracy that I missed, make sure to mention them in the comments section below and I’ll add it to this list!
70+ Insightful Quotes About Democracy
1. “Democracy passes into despotism.” – Plato
2. “Secrecy begets tyranny.” – Robert A. Heinlein
3. “Democracy is an abuse of statistics.” – Jorge Luis Borges
4. “The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” – Abraham Lincoln
5. “Democracy is the best revenge.” – Unknown
6. “The first duty of a man is to think for himself.” – Jose Marti
7. “Advertising is the very essence of democracy.” – Anton Chekhov
8. “Adultery is the application of democracy to love.” – H. L. Mencken
9. “It’s a beautiful thing when democracy prevails.” – Marianne Williamson
10. “You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.” – George W. Bush
11. “Journalism is what we need to make democracy work.” – Walter Cronkite
12. “Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.” – Ronald Reagan
13. “Our democracy is designed to speak truth to power.” – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
14. “Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.” – Jawaharlal Nehru
15. “Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
16. “Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” – James Russell Lowell
17. “Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.” – Jesse Jackson
18. “The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.” – John F. Kennedy
19. “Citizens in a democracy need diverse sources of news and information.” – Bernie Sanders
20. “The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.” – Noam Chomsky
21. “Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.” – Woodrow Wilson
22. “Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
23. “Struggles do not end when countries attempt the transition to democracy.” – Hillary Clinton
24. “Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” – Noam Chomsky
25. “Democracies have to be careful that they do not become so process-driven.” – Hillary Clinton
26. “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” – H. L. Mencken
27. “Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.” – Bertrand Russell
28. “The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.” – Benjamin Disraeli
29. “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.” – Oscar Wilde
30. “The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.” – P. J. O’Rourke
31. “When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.” – Montesquieu
32. “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” – Alan Moore
33. “All the blood is drained out of democracy, it diesΒ when only half the population votes.” – Hunter S. Thompson
34. “One doesn’t want one’s democracy to behave like a dictatorial or fascistic police. One doesn’t.” – Tom Stoppard
35. “Democracy is a process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.” – Laurence J. Peter
36. “Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely.” – Aristotle
37. “Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.” – Robert Kennedy
38. “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” – Winston S. Churchill
39. “I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.” – Dan Quayle
40. “Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.” – James Russell Lowell
41. “Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” – James Bovard
42. “Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.” – George Bernard Shaw
43. “Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.” – E. B. White
44. “Democracy is still a radical idea in a world where we often confuse images with realities, words with actions.” – Hillary Clinton
45. “Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.” – Thomas Mann
46. “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” – H.L. Mencken
47. “Democracy is worth dying for because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.” – Ronald Reagan
48. “Customs, traditions, laws should be flexible, within good reason, if that is what it takes to make our democracy work.” – John Lewis
49. “The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.” – Niels Bohr
50. “The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires a change of heart.” – Mahatma Gandhi
51. “Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.” – Sydney J. Harris
52. “The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” – Woodrow Wilson
53. “Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.” – Herbert Hoover
54. “In a democracy, the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.” – Aristotle
55. “A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.” – James Madison
56. “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.” – Gilbert K. Chesterton.
57. “Democracy doesn’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
58. “I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
59. “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” – Thomas Jefferson
60. “Our only real hope for democracy is that we get the money out of politics entirely and establish a system of publicly funded elections.” – Noam Chomsky
61. “Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.” – William Inge
62. “This is why we feel that democracy’s important, because democracy allows you to have small explosions and therefore avoid the bigger explosions.” – Indira Gandhi
63. “Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.” – Steven Pinker
64. “Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.” – Andrew Jackson
65. “Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.” – Ronald Reagan
66. “Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.” – Aristotle
67. “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
68. “The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.” – Jimmy Carter
69. “Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote.” – Marvin Simkin
70. “People cannot be free unless they are willing to sacrifice some of their interests to guarantee the freedom of others. The price of democracy is the ongoing pursuit of the common good by all of the people.” – Saul Alinsky