A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.
A. Philip Randolph
Since almost all Negroes are workers, live on wages, and suffer from the high cost of food, clothing and shelter, it is obvious that the Republican and Democratic Parties are opposed to their interests.
You know, Democratic and Republican administrations alike have supported individuals and regimes that have slaughtered millions across the globe. And they need to be held accountable for that.
Aaron McGruder
We no longer claim that a genuinely religious government can be democratic, but that it cannot be otherwise.
Abdolkarim Soroush
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
If everybody is happy, then something is wrong with the democratic process.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 laid the foundation for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but it also addressed nearly every other aspect of daily life in a would-be free democratic society.
Aberjhani
Our democratic culture does not prioritise protecting an individual's right to live life her way, especially if that is not our way or the way of the community.
Abhijit Banerjee
My family is democratic in the true sense.
Abhinav Shukla
So we want an Islamic state where Islamic law is not just in the books but enforced, and enforced with determination. There is no space and no room for democratic consultation. The Shariah is set and fixed, so why do we need to discuss it anymore? Just implement it!
Abu Bakar Bashir
Democratic politicians have disliked things I've written, Republican politicians... if they all love you, you might as well be driving a Good Humor truck.
Adam Clymer
Voter ID laws have a disproportionate impact on groups that lean democratic - including blacks, hispanics and students.
Adam Cohen
Vinyl is democratic, as surely as the iPod is fascist. Vinyl is representational: It has a face. Two faces, in fact, to represent the dualism of human nature. Vinyl occupies physical space honestly, proud as a fat woman dancing.
Adam Mansbach
Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arabs can be elected to the parliament in a democratic election.
Adam Michnik
In Czechoslovakia in 1968, communist reformers appealed to democratic ideals that were deeply rooted in the country's pre-second world war past.
I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins.
Adam Rapp
Everything is completely democratic in this band so far and that is the way that we would like to keep it.
Adam Rich
The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process.
Adlai Stevenson I
Consider in 1945, when the United Nations was first formed, there were something like fifty-one original member countries. Now the United Nations is made up of 193 nations, but it follows the same structure in which five nations control it. It's an anti-democratic structure.
Adolfo Perez Esquivel
In many countries, schools are preparing students to participate in a democratic environment; yet schools themselves tend to be extremely autocratic, with all high-level decisions being made by adults.
Adora Svitak
When Mohamed Morsi was elected president of Egypt in 2012, many in the country, including me, were hopeful that he would become a democratic president for all Egyptians - not only for the Muslim Brotherhood.
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.
Every effort should be made to help build the new democratic nation with reconciliation and forgiveness, for the sake of Egypt and not for the benefit of a party or a group.
Now the fact that terrorists throughout the world see this as an opportunity to defeat the United States, we have to be - and every Democratic candidate, even those who opposed us going in, now say we just simply can't cut and run.
The way I see it, I'm not going to Washington to be the 60th Democratic senator. I'm going to Washington to be the second senator from the state of Minnesota.
Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.
We need to remake the Democratic party. We need to remake America.
I do believe the Democratic party has moved far to the right. I do believe that the party has a bunch of elephants running around in donkey clothes.
The genius of our institutions is democratic - baseball is a democratic game.
Issue by issue, if I were a Congressman, I would receive the highest rating from liberal think-tank Americans For Democratic Action.
I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.
I am deeply concerned that, without peace and a two-state solution, the Jewish and democratic nature of Israel is in danger. That's why I have opposed Israel's settlement policy since 1973, and that's why I have favored a two-state solution since 1967.
We're a democratic society. Shutting down the government should not be on the agenda.
Every economy exists, no matter what the level of democracy, has elements of crony capitalism. It's - given human nature and given the democratic structures, which we all, I assume, adhere to, that is an inevitable consequence.
Bureaucracies are inherently antidemocratic. Bureaucrats derive their power from their position in the structure, not from their relations with the people they are supposed to serve. The people are not masters of the bureaucracy, but its clients.
In animation, the directors are part of a huge team of animators who all have opinions, too. It's a much more democratic process. Also, the animation executives oversee things more.
I've always been completely autocratic. I've never learned to be diplomatic or democratic.
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
And I think to be in NATO for the countries of our region, it means more guarantees for us, it means more responsibility for our common security, but it means fulfillment of all standards of civilized world, like protection of human rights and democratic mechanisms.
We are a strong democratic country.
There is simply no room for anti-Semitism in a democratic and law-abiding state.
As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh.
The goal isn't, and shouldn't be, to block Hillary Clinton. The goal is to make sure a potential President Clinton is beholden to a better Congress and a better Democratic Party.
In some future America, there could be a plausible Michael Bloomberg path to the Democratic nomination. I would love to read a column by a smart person actually attempting to persuade me of this, using evidence.
We get so little news about the developing world that we often forget that there are literally millions of people out there struggling to change things to be fairer, freer, more democratic, less corrupt.
Botswana is actually very peaceful. It's democratic. It never was in debt. They've been fortunate, they've had diamonds.
I'm not saying everything in Sweden is perfect, because it's not. But it is interesting having grown up in a social democratic country such as Sweden and then watching what's going on in the U.S. and the income disparity.
I was indoctrinated into a Democratic Party cult from a very early age. But I know that's not the only America and we need to understand the other side.
For me, democratic socialism is about - really, the value for me is that I believe that in a modern, moral, and wealthy society, no person in America should be too poor to live.
When we talk about the word 'socialism,' I think what it really means is just democratic participation in our economic dignity and our economic, social, and racial dignity. It is about direct representation and people actually having power and stake over their economic and social wellness, at the end of the day.
