If the people of Utah shall peacefully form a State Constitution tolerating polygamy, will the Democracy admit them into the Union?

The people will save their government, if the government itself will allow them.

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.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

We cannot have communion with Christ till we are in union with Him; and we cannot have communion with the Church till we are in vital union with it.

Israel was not created in order to disappear – Israel will endure and flourish. It is the child of hope and the home of the brave. It can neither be broken by adversity nor demoralized by success. It carries the shield of democracy and it honors the sword of freedom.

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy – but that could change.

All the blood is drained out of democracy – it dies – when only half the population votes.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man.

It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.

Polygamy: An endeavour to get more out of life than there is in it.

Economic freedom cannot be sacrificed if political freedom is to be preserved.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Democracy is our commitment. It is our great legacy, a legacy we simply cannot compromise. Democracy is in our DNA.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

What I worry about would be that you essentially have two chambers, the House and the Senate, but you have simply, majoritarian, absolute power on either side. And that’s just not what the founders intended.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

China has to go along with world trends. That’s democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward.

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who’ll get the blame.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s enemies have refined their instruments of repression.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves and the only way they could do this is by not voting.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‚Ich bin ein Berliner!‘

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.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

No man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent.

For the record, our democracy is revered around the world. And free elections are the best way on Earth to choose our leaders. This is how we elected John F. Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; two George Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama. It has worked for decades.

We have the oldest written constitution still in force in the world, and it starts out with three words, ‚We, the people.‘

I think our democracy has it exactly right: two terms, eight years. It’s enough. Because it’s important to have one foot in reality when you have access to this kind of power.

There’s a lot of fuss on the Left about election irregularities, like, you know, the voting machines were tampered with, they didn’t count the votes right, and so on. That’s all accurate and of some importance, but of far more importance is the fact that elections just don’t take place, not in any meaningful sense of the term ‚election.‘

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.

Without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party.

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

I understand a ship to be made for the carrying and preservation of the cargo, and so long as the ship can be saved, with the cargo, it should never be abandoned. This Union likewise should never be abandoned unless it fails and the possibility of its preservation shall cease to exist, without throwing passengers and cargo overboard.

We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

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.

Well the protester I think is a very powerful thing. It’s basically a mechanism of democracy that, along with capitalism, scientific innovation, those things have built the modern world. And it’s wonderful that the new tools have empowered that protestor so that state secrets, bad developments are not hidden anymore.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

That fatal drollery called a representative government.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

I think it’s important to vote.

The happy Union of these States is a wonder; their Constitution a miracle; their example the hope of Liberty throughout the world.

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.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.