I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.
The leaders of the Democratic Party aren't soft on Communism. They're soft on Democracy.
Democracy is not a mathematical deduction proved once and for all time. Democracy is a just faith fervently held, commitment to be tested again and again in the fiery furnace of history.
Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.
Democracy's real test lies in its respect for minority opinion.
When you begin to suggest that dissent, opposition, resistance, the only way to deal with it is not to listen to it and to engage in dialog with it, but basically to label it as anarchy and to repress it with the most violent, in the most violent means possible. I mean, that's essentially an element of neofascism. That's not about democracy.
Bipartisan democracy presupposes the individual, whose welfare is identical with that of the community in which he lives, the absence of coherent social classes, a basic uniformity of interest throughout.
If you look at US internal documents, they explain very clearly what the threat of Cuba was. So, back in the early 1960s the State Department described the threat of Cuba as Castro's successful defiance of US policy, going back to the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine established the US claim to dominate the Western hemisphere and Castro was successfully defying that. That's not tolerable. It is like somebody saying "let's have democracy in Greece," and we just can't tolerate that so we have to destroy the threat at its roots.
Lokmanya Tilak said "Swaraj is my birthright" but now the people of India must say, "Surajya is my birthright".
The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.
If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.
What you're seeing is a loss of confidence in institutions and their legitimacy because they are not seen as delivering. It's hardly a surprise that it's producing a degree of paralysis. Politics becomes very reactive and it's hard to deal with the bigger issues.
To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.
The public trust is at the core of both a free market economy and a democracy.
The Internet has brought democracy to so many other things. It's about time the Internet brought democracy to democracy.
I think that America has to stand with democracy.
Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.
One reason the United States finds itself at the edge of a foreign policy disaster is its underinformed citizenry, a key weakness in democracy.
I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.
It is the life of democracy to favor equality.