Dark Democracy Quotes & Sayings

I focus on a simple message: when you leave the two-thirds of Americans without college degrees out of your vision of the good life, they notice. And when elites commit to equality for many different groups but arrogantly dismiss "the dark rigidity of fundamentalist rural America,"6 this is a recipe for extreme alienation among working-class whites. Deriding "political correctness" becomes a way for less-privileged whites to express their fury at the snobbery of more-privileged whites. I don't like what this dynamic is doing to America. There are two reasons I think we have to try to replace it with a healthier one. The first is ethical: I am committed to social equality, not for some groups but for all groups. The second is strategic: the hidden injuries of class7 now have become visible in politics so polarized that our democracy is threatened. A few words — Joan C. Williams

There are also silent drinkers with big chapped red fists around silent glasses, huddled over, figuring out ways to get their wives outa their thoughts and you can see their mouths lengthen down and draw sorrow almost as you look. — Jack Kerouac

The problem was never my mind; it was a heart that could never hold all that it felt. — Shannon L. Alder

It is one of the saddest spectacles of our time to see a great democratic movement support a policy which must lead to the destruction of democracy and which meanwhile can benefit only a minority of the masses who support it. Yet it is this support from the Left of the tendencies toward monopoly which make them so irresistible and the prospects of the future so dark. — Friedrich Hayek

Snow was the most beautiful thing Amitola had ever seen. It fell so gracefully and drizzled her skin like a cold whisper. — Aishabella Sheikh

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman. — Adam Michnik

O thrush, your song is passing sweet, But never a song that you have sung Is half so sweet as thrushes sang When my dear love and I were young. — William Morris

We were the lucky ones, the notthese, we were the ones who had survived the aerial bombing and fire-clusters, the final flash. Regrettable, unavoidable, a war to end all wars, a war for democracy, a war for freedom, peaceful war. Sometimes war is necessary. Sometimes war is right.
But to the broken and the dead, to the wounded and the maimed, to the exploded and the shrapnelshattered, to minds gone dark, to eyes that have seen agony no tears can wash away, it hardly matters that the dead language of war repeats itself through time. The bodies that can say nothing have the last word.
What is it - the last word? No.
No more war. — Jeanette Winterson

2010 is not just a choice between Republicans and Democrats. 2010 is not just a choice between liberals and conservatives. 2010 is a referendum on the very identity of our nation. — Marco Rubio

The dichotomies, the brokenness of the culture around things like the Vietnam war, and then a lot of it has to do with war and where we put our energy and money and attention. And the military industrial complex, which dominates our whole economy. Even with the vision of democracy in other places we know the dark side. — Anne Waldman

Decades ago, visitors from other planets warned us about the direction we were heading and offered to help. Instead, some of us interpreted their visits as a threat, and decided to shoot first and ask questions after. It is ironic that the US should be fighting monstrously expensive wars, allegedly to bring democracy to those countries, when it itself can no longer claim to be called a democracy when trillions, and I mean thousands of billions of dollars have been spent on black projects which both congress and the commander in chief have been kept deliberately in the dark. — Paul Hellyer

If your a leader, do everything you can to grow yourself and create the right environment for others to grow. — John C. Maxwell

Slogans seem to be dead; this world is now busy chanting fears of lost democracy — Munia Khan

It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents - Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama - have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The perfect disinterestedness and self-devotion of which men seem incapable, but which is sometimes found in women. — Thomas B. Macaulay

Dark influences from the American past congregate among us still. If we are a democracy, what are we to make of the palpable elements of plutocracy, oligarchy, and mounting theocracy that rule our state? How do we address the self-inflicted catastrophes that devastated our natural environment? So large is our malaise that no single writer can encompass it. We have no Emerson or Whitman among us. An institutionalized counterculture condemns individuality as archaic and depreciates intellectual values, even in the universities. (The Anatomy of Influence) — Harold Bloom

The painter locks himself out of his own studio. And then has to break in like a thief. — Jackson Pollock

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.
Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the qu icksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. — Martin Luther King Jr.

The Eucharist is a fire that inflames us, that, like lions breathing fire, we may retire from the altar being made terrible to the devil. — Saint John Chrysostom

No matter how dark the cloud, there is always a thin, silver lining, and that is what we must look for. The silver lining will come, if not to us then to next generation or the generation after that. And maybe with that generation the lining will no longer be thin. — Wangari Maathai

In a democracy, citizens pass judgment on their government, and if they are kept in the dark about what their government is doing, they cannot be in a position to make well-grounded decisions. — Peter Singer

We praise the strength, the patience and the longing of the people who did not stop thinking of freedom and democracy in these dark times — Joachim Gauck

I wish I could say when Michael's dark eyes met mind, I was completely cool and collected about seeing him again after all this time, and that I laughed airily and said all the right things. I wish I could say after having pretty much single-handedly brought democracy to a country I happen to be a princess of, and written a four-hundred-page romance novel, and gotten into every college to which I applied (even if it's just because I'm a princess), that I handled meeting Michael for the first time again after throwing my snowflake necklace in his face almost two years ago with total grace and aplomb.
But I totally didn't. — Meg Cabot

Once you dive into the battlefield . . . there is only fighting with all your heart, toe-to-toe with whosoever your opponent might be. — Reki Kawahara

We salute our veterans of Pearl Harbor and World War II, whose sacrifices saved democracy during a dark hour. In their memory, a new generation of our Armed Forces goes forward against new enemies in a new era. Once again, we pledge to defend freedom, secure our homeland, and advance peace around the world. Americans have been tested before, and our Nation will triumph again. — George W. Bush

A democracy without faith is just a machine without power. Nothing can make it function except faith in itself, in the ordinary man and woman. — Eleanor Dark

Thinking is the natural activity of the mind. Meditation is not about stopping your thoughts. Meditation is simply a process of resting the mind in its natural state, which is open to and naturally aware of thoughts, emotions, and sensations as they occur. — Eric Swanson

My father once told me that American democracy is a people's democracy at heart, and that it therefore can be as great as the American people, or as fallible. It depends on all of us. But our system is more fragile than we know. To sustain it, we must always cherish the ideals on which it was founded, remain vigilant against the dark forces that threaten it, and actively engage in the process of making it work. — George Takei