Quotes · Skopia

63 quotes

The New York Times · 1928

★ 1.2

The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.

George Washington

First Inaugural Address of George Washington · 1789

★ 1.3

Legal opinion · Legal writing

Right conclusions are more likely to be gathered out of a multitude of tongues, than through any kind of authoritative selection. To many this is, and will always be, folly; but we have staked upon it our all.

Learned Hand

United States v. Associated Press · 1943

★ 1.8

Political literature

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

Norman Mailer

1964

★ 1.8

Political literature

The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people.

Walter Bagehot

1867

★ 1.9

Magazine

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

E.B. White

1944

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

We are not the masters. The people are the masters. We are the servants of the people... What the electorate gives, the electorate can take away.

Tony Blair

1997

★ 1.9

Political literature

The cure for the ills of Democracy is more Democracy.

Jane Addams

1902

★ 1.9

Economic literature · Historical literature

Bureaucracy is not an obstacle to democracy but an inevitable complement to it.

Joseph Schumpeter

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy · 1942

★ 1.9

Speech · Political speech

Communism is based on the belief that man is so weak and inadequate that he is unable to govern himself, and therefore requires the rule of strong masters. Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.

Harry Truman

Second Inaugural Address of Harry Truman · 1949

★ 1.9

Film · Black comedy · Drama (film) · Comedy

You see, I believe in the voters. They understand that elections aren't just popularity contests. They know this country was built by people just like me who work very hard and don't have everything handed to them on a silver spoon.

Tracy Flick

Election · 1999

★ 1.9

Essay · Political literature

A pure democracy, by which I mean a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction.

James Madison

1787

★ 2.0

Speech

We are now forming a republican government. Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Alexander Hamilton

1787

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

It is my firm conviction that the civilized world is tending toward republicanism, or government by the people through their chosen representatives, and that our own great Republic is destined to be the guiding star to all others.

Ulysses S. Grant

Second Inaugural Address of Ulysses S. Grant · 1873

★ 2.0

Essay · Magazine

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Oscar Wilde

Fortnightly Review · 1891

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

The life of a man is three-score years and ten: a little more, a little less. The life of a Nation is the fullness of the measure of its will to live.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

1941

★ 2.0

Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.

Harry Truman

1972

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

Since the turn of the century, the number of democracies in the world has grown fourfold. Human freedom is on the march, and nowhere more so than in our own hemisphere. Freedom is one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit. People, worldwide, hunger for the right of self-determination, for those inalienable rights that make for human dignity and progress.

Ronald Reagan

Second Inaugural Address of Ronald Reagan · 1985

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

Our democratic faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along. And even after nearly 225 years, we have a long way yet to travel.

George W. Bush

First Inaugural Address of George W. Bush · 2001

★ 2.0

Speech · Political speech

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Thomas Jefferson

First Inaugural Address of Thomas Jefferson · 1801

★ 2.1

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