Hate numbs the judgment, paralyzes the vitals of democracy.
A. A. Gill
I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy.
A. J. Liebling
In a democracy, the well-being, individuality and happiness of every citizen is important for the overall prosperity, peace and happiness of the nation.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Negroes are in no mood to shoulder guns for democracy abroad while they are denied democracy here at home.
A. Philip Randolph
Television is the most perfect democracy. You sit there with your remote control and vote.
Aaron Brown
We have, essentially, a worthless democracy.
Aaron McGruder
You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.
Abbie Hoffman
Democracy depends on well educated and engaged citizens.
Abby Huntsman
America has an identity crisis. This is a relatively new country compared to the rest of the world, yet it's the bully that fronts to know war and democracy like none other, therefore leading the global arbitration on both fronts.
Abby Martin
One of the achievements of the reform movement is that people realize that they can be democrats and remain faithful Muslims. Democracy is now an established idea.
Abdolkarim Soroush
Democracy is constructed like an edifice, freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.
Abdoulaye Wade
In the past, the West had tried to export one formula of democracy which should fit to the rest of the world, and they discovered that this doesn't work.
Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair
I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends.
Abdullah II of Jordan
We want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East is the Muslim Brotherhood.
Jordan has to show the Arab world that there's another way of doing things. We're a monarchy, yes, but if we can show democracy that leads to a two-, three-, four-party system - left, right and center - in a couple of years' time, then the Muslim Brotherhood will no longer be something to contend with.
I told the students that we can exert pressure without resorting to violence, and that we can move towards democracy without violence; that way, God will allow it.
Abdurrahman Wahid
Public conversations about who we are and who we want to be are key to the vitality of our democracy, and leaders can seed those conversations when they speak out their own views.
Abhijit Banerjee
If democracy is to be an articulation of mutual respect, a leader in a democracy leads by showing respect to all.
If democracy as we know it has to survive the elites have to regain their credibility. And they have to start by admitting that their economic model is broken.
This is why universities, and civil society more generally, are so important for a democracy like ours, founded on a genuine idealism that we have a hard time holding on to. They provide a space to question whatever we are doing in the name of things we say we believe in or might believe in.
From my time at the CIA to my time in the House, I've dedicated my career to protecting our democracy and ensuring it works for all of us.
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?
We have shown that Islam can rule the world perfectly for 14 centuries, and during this time of Muslim power we did not borrow ideas like democracy from others, so why do we need to learn democracy from them now?
But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam.
I'm advocating that American citizens interested in democracy should stay out of chain stores.
Congress needs to toughen the laws protecting elections and make clear that anyone interfering with democracy will pay a stiff price.
Supporters of tough voter ID laws are not afraid of vote fraud - they are afraid of democracy.
An election in which people have to wait 10 hours to vote, or in which black voters wait in the rain for hours, while white voters zip through polling places, is unworthy of the world's leading democracy.
Tony Blair believed in a consumerist idea of democracy.
Of course there are many factors that led to the Iranian revolution, but back in 1951, the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company - which would later become BP - and its principal owner, the British government, conspired to destroy democracy and install a western-controlled regime in Iran.
Back in the 1950s, America set out to intervene in Syria, liberate the people from a corrupt elite, and bring about a new democracy. They did this with the best of intentions, but it led to disaster. And out of that disaster, the Assad regime rose to power.
Why am I such a Euro-enthusiast? Because I knew it was an anchor of democracy.
We will not let terrorists change our way of life; we will not live in fear; and we will not undermine the civil liberties that characterize our Democracy.
Growing up in this post-apartheid era, the first generation of teens in South Africa living in this new democracy, I often found myself feeling different. I was often the only person of color in an otherwise all-white school. And within the Indian community, because of my training with an English acting teacher, my accent was very different.
Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for.
As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.
The democracy we are constructing must be able to show its usefulness and relevance.
Pergamon, a prosperous city in western Anatolia, was fabled to have been founded by Hercules' son. Like many Hellenistic cities populated by Greeks who intermarried with indigenous people, Pergamon after Alexander the Great's death (323 B.C.) had evolved a hybrid of democracy and Persian-influenced monarchy.
Be assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and in armed guards.
Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
And we are grateful to the American young men and women who are risking their lives to give the Iraqi people this chance, this dream of democracy in Iraq now.
The view that we hold in Iraq now is this - that democracy is associated with elections. I believe that elections are possible.
I'd rather have the influence than the power, and the influence to me is to build institutions of independence and democracy, to regain for Egypt prestige in education and science and technology.
Egypt was the first democracy in the Middle East. Women were unveiled in the 1920s. Egypt is a country of civilization, of culture. It shouldn't be suffering.
It is true that Egypt's attempt at democracy after the 2011 revolution encountered many obstacles in governance and infrastructure.
The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals.
Egypt had the first constitution in the Middle East that allowed for liberty. And it had democracy.
An ordinary Turk, an ordinary Arab, an ordinary Tunisian can change history. We believe that democracy is good, and that our people deserve it.
We shouldn't waste any more time in making sure that democracy is properly rooted in our political life and the supremacy of the law becomes an integral part of our state's structure.
