participation quotes

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

The Occupy movement did create spontaneously communities that taught people something: you can be in a supportive community of mutual aid and cooperation and develop your own health system and library and have open space for democratic discussion and participation. Communities like that are really important.

I’m interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification.

It is our future on the line, and we must at least have a say in it.

When a country has the skill and self-confidence to take action against its biggest problems, it makes outsiders eager to be a part of it.

International summits and organisations like WTO take decisions, which will bind us, and if we are not present in such summits, we may be hurt by the decisions taken.

In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope?

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

The internet could be a very positive step towards education, organisation and participation in a meaningful society.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Will the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you’ll just rattle your jewelry.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

Everybody is a political person, whether you say something or you are silent. A political attitude is not whether you go to parliament; it’s how you deal with your life, with your surroundings.

That’s why I hate to get started in these jam sessions. I’m always the last one to leave.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

Democracy is a daring concept – a hope that we’ll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.