The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source, they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world.

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.

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

Here, sir, the people govern; here they act by their immediate representatives.

Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I’ll be right there with you as a citizen – inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

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

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

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.

Remember, no one decides who they’re going to vote for based on the vice president. I mean that literally.

I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.

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

A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls.

Adultery is the application of democracy to love.

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.

I’m glad I can’t vote.

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.

We have the best government that money can buy.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

My Democratic friends just can’t accept the fact that the American people chose Donald Trump to be president – it’s called democracy. My advice to them, and I say this gently: Fill out a ‚Hurt Feelings Report‘ and let’s move on.

Spaniards were condemned for appeasing terrorism by voting for withdrawing troops from Iraq in the absence of U.N. authorization – that is, for taking a stand rather like that of 70 percent of Americans, who called for the U.N. to take the leading role in Iraq.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

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.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

My fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans.

A man without a vote is man without protection.

As I have done in every election since I started voting so many years ago, I always like to take my time and examine the two candidates, see not only the two candidates but the policies they will bring in, the people they will bring in, who they might appoint to the Supreme Court, and look at the whole range of issues before making a decision.

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.

You’re not just voting for an individual, in my judgment, you’re voting for an agenda. You’re voting for a platform. You’re voting for a political philosophy.

The New Deal repudiation of democracy has left the Republican Party alone the guardian of the Ark of the Covenant with its charter of freedom.

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear.

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

If everybody that voted in 2008 shows up in 2010, we will win this election. We will win this election.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

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.

I wanted in my lifetime to vote for a radical Native American woman, since my vision of any future that we might have is that it will be led by women and older women.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

A whole people with the ballot in their hands possess the most conclusive and unlimited power ever entrusted to humanity.

We’ve become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that’s been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I’ve ever seen in my life.

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

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

It’s actually very easy for democracy to disappear.

To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots only, are necessary.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

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.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

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.

Democracy passes into despotism.

When I joined the freedom movement in Mississippi in my early 20s, it was to come to the aid of sharecroppers, like my parents, who had been thrown off the land they’d always known – the plantations – because they attempted to exercise their ‚democratic‘ right to vote.

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