Quotes & Sayings About Democratic Republic

Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers. — G.K. Chesterton

The Republic of Macedonia is being built on democratic ideals and values, not on ethnic groups. Those ideals and values include economic opportunities, language and educational opportunities, religious rights, and political processes. — Boris Trajkovski

They tell us that we live in a great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people. This is too much, even for a joke. But it is not a subject for levity; it is an exceedingly serious matter. — Eugene V. Debs

You may ask what kind of a republic I dream of. Let me reply: I dream of a republic independent, free, and democratic, of a republic economically prosperous and yet socially just; in short, of a humane republic which serves the individual and which therefore holds the hope that the individual will serve it in turn. Of a republic of well-rounded people, because without such it is impossible to solve any of our problems, human, economic, ecological, social, or political. — Vaclav Havel

But clothing themselves in the trappings of democracy, dictators may, like drag queens, tend to overdo it, and Napoleon wanted there to be no doubt that his French Republic was more democratic than any before it. — Tom Reiss

One of the matters that must be addressed is that Rwanda and Uganda have to leave the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We're also supporting processes to ensure that the political dialogue among the Congolese themselves takes place so that the people there can decide their future. — Thabo Mbeki

It is a testament to the strength and purity of the democratic sentiment in the country, that the republic has not been overthrown by its newspapers. — Harriet Martineau

Overcoming the Cold War required courage from the people of Central and Eastern Europe and what was then the German Democratic Republic, but it also required the steadfastness of Western partner over many decades when many had long lost hope of integration of the two Germanys and Europe. — Angela Merkel

I can't be calm when I drive through sections of Atlanta that look more like Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, than America. — Cynthia McKinney

The government of the German Democratic Republic rejects secret policies. It works for the people, and only the people, so it does not need to keep secrets like the warmongers. — Walter Ulbricht

I started, actually, as an analyst on African affairs, mainly on Al Jazeera. I remember the first few series were about Saudi students, and the negotiations between the government and the Sudanese rebels in the south. And then, slowly, I was speaking about Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and a few other places. — Wadah Khanfar

Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following. — Paul Johnson

Yet while I do this work because of my faith, I also recognize of course that in a pluralistic society there are many different perspectives. It is both unrealistic and wrong to insist that everyone hold my views, my faith. The place we meet, in our differences, is in the founding documents of our democratic republic. — Simone Campbell

In 1988, the Senate passed a Resolution "To acknowledge the contribution of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations to the development of the United States Constitution," which included affirmations that "the original framers of the Constitution, including, most notably, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly admired the concepts of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy" and "the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself. — Peter Manseau

No fundamentalist undercurrent ran through the national culture before the first war. Sufism had always been the predominant Muslim sect, and Wahhabism was a foreign, wartime import. A few times a year, Arab Wahhabis came through the village in search of recruits. They promised rations, shelter, an eternity in Paradise, and, until that day of glorious martyrdom, a monthly salary of two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars. Few young men followed the monochromatic Wahhabi faith, but many were quite willing to be radicalized for a monthly salary that eclipsed what they would otherwise earn in a year. The war of independence so quickly conflated with jihad because no one cared about the self-determination of a small landlocked republic. Arab states would gladly fund a war of religion, but not one of nationalism. And in this way it didn't matter who won the war between the Feds and fundamentalists: the notion of a democratic and fully sovereign Chechnya would be crushed regardless. — Anthony Marra

No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it. — William L. Shirer

After the countrywide victory of the Chinese revolution and the solution of the land problem, two basic contradictions will still exist in China. The first is internal, that is, the contradiction between the working class and the bourgeoisie. The second is external, which is the contradiction between China and the imperialist countries. Consequently, after the victory of the people's democratic revolution, the state power of the people's republic under the leadership of the working class must not be weakened but must be strengthened. — Mao Zedong

The state is nothing but an instrument of opression of one class by another - no less so in a democratic republic than in a monarchy. — Friedrich Engels

Three circumstances seem to me to contribute more than all others to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United States.
The first is that federal form of government which the Americans have adopted, and which enables the Union to combine the power of a great republic with the security of a small one.
The second consists in those township institutions which limit the despotism of the majority and at the same time impart to the people a taste for freedom and the art of being free.
The third is to be found in the constitution of the judicial power. I have shown how the courts of justice serve to repress the excesses of democracy, and how they check and direct the impulses of the majority without stopping its activity. — Alexis De Tocqueville

With people's revolutionary rage, the king will be ousted and a democratic state, Islamic Republic, will be established. — Ruhollah Khomeini

I created the Dikembe Mutombo Foundation back in 1997 for the purpose of going in and improving the living conditions of my people on the African continent, especially in the Democratic Republic of Congo where I came from. Out first mission was to go and build a new hospital. Our next mission was to build a school. — Dikembe Mutombo

Protestantism came to America to make America Protestant. It was assumed that was to be done through faith in the reasonableness of the common man and the establishment of a democratic republic. — Stanley Hauerwas

Liberals never, ever drop a heinous idea; they just change the name. Abortion becomes choice, communist becomes progressive, communist dictatorship becomes people's democratic republic and Nikita Khrushchev becomes Barack Obama. — Ann Coulter

The Western public should learn and remember one essential thing about China: no matter what European and North American propaganda barks about the People's Republic, China is much more "democratic" than the West. It is democratic in its own way. — Andre Vltchek

Octavius Augustus became the first Roman emperor because the republic granted him enormous powers. And why did the republic do that? Why did it commit suicide to make way for an empire? Tacitus explains it thus: Cuncta fessa. Which means 'the whole world is tired.' Weariness in the face of political and social insecurity is what led to Rome losing its rights and freedoms. Fear induces a hunger for authoritarianism in people. Fear is a really bad adviser. And now look around you, Bruna: everyone's afraid. We're living in critical times. Our democratic system is also on the verge of suicide. Sometimes nations opt to throw themselves into the abyss. — Rosa Montero

DPRK translates to Democratic People's Republic of Korea - and if the words Democratic and Republic sound like a good thing, well, it's oxymoronic because the Korea we're talking about here is the communist one in the North, and when I said the pastor's father was their guest, what I really meant is he was shot down, captured, tortured, and held prisoner by a depraved enemy in what today can only be described as a failed state. — Tucker Elliot

Many instances of persecution and killing have occurred in countries with atrocious human rights records such as Sri Lanka, Guatemala and the Democratic Republic of Congo. — David Suzuki

I confess that during the citizenship application process the founding principles of this country have grown on me. I have come to believe in the ideal that "We the People" can come together "to form a more perfect Union". The United States represent the most awesome social experiment in the world - a melting pot of cultures, united behind the idea of living free in a democratic Republic. — Gudjon Bergmann

This point deserves attention, for if a democratic republic similar to that of the United States were ever founded in a country where the power of a single individual had previously subsisted, and the effects of a centralized administration had sunk deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not hesitate to assert, that in that country a more insufferable despotism would prevail than any which now exists in the monarchical States of Europe, or indeed than any which could be found on this side of the confines of Asia. — Alexis De Tocqueville

The Czech Republic is a dynamic United Nations Member State, active on the Human Rights Council, contributing to the peaceful settlement of disputes, and helping other countries to achieve a democratic transition. — Ban Ki-moon

The transformation of the United States from a traditional republic to a democratic nation run in large measure by a single executive took a couple of hundred years. — Noah Feldman

The plan shows that the twenty million people in the German democratic Republic and in the democratic sector of Berlin think only of peace, and that they are working for freedom and peaceful prosperity. — Walter Ulbricht

When I look at Africa many questions come to mind, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Dr Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba were to rise up and see what is happening, many times I have asked myself what would happen if Nelson Madiba Mandela were to rise up and see what is happening, because what they will be confronted with is an Africa where the Democratic Republic of Congo is unsettled, there is a war going on there, but it's not on the front pages of our newspapers because we don't even control our newspapers and the media. — Patrick L.O. Lumumba

I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government. — Lincoln Steffens

I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic ... the term "mores" ... meaning ... habits of the heart. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Consider a resident of Berlin, born in 1900 and living to the ripe age of one hundred. She spent her childhood in the Hohenzollern Empire of William II; her adult years in the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich and Communist East Germany; and she died a citizen of a democratic and reunified Germany. She had managed to be a part of five very different sociopolitical systems, though her DNA remained exactly the same. — Yuval Noah Harari

The word Tocqueville used was "mores" - meaning those habits "of central importance accepted without question and embodying the fundamental moral views of a group." He wrote: "I considered mores to be one of the great general causes responsible for the maintenance of a democratic republic." And then he said that by the term "mores" he meant "habits of the heart." In the same book Tocqueville put it as bluntly as Franklin or Adams had, writing: "Liberty cannot be established without morality." This — Eric Metaxas

I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire. — Lynn Nottage

The great decisions of government cannot be dictated by the concerns of religious factions ... We have succeeded for 205 years in keeping the affairs of state separate from the uncompromising idealism of religious groups and we mustn't stop now. To retreat from that separation would violate the principles of conservatism and the values upon which the framers built this democratic republic. — Barry Goldwater

There are some historians who say that democratic republics dont last more than 200 years. Well, weve got to show that you can last more than 200 years. Weve got to continue to sustain the system, and the only way you can do it is by sustaining the constitution and by confronting lies face to face, head on, aggressively. — Maurice Hinchey

We would be driving down the street in a place like Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and started to see, my gosh, the only people that have shoes are men. Why does that woman have a baby in her belly and one on her back, and she's carrying a huge load of bananas? You start to ask these questions. — Melinda Gates

I certainly hoped that in the Eastern part of Germany, what was just beginning to be called the German Democratic Republic, you would develop a system of socialism with freedom and democracy. — Stefan Heym

I have seen and drawn dying, poisoned worlds. I published a book of drawings called 'Death of Wood' about one such world, on the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and what was then still the German Democratic Republic. — Gunter Grass

The political form of a society wherein the proletariat is victorious in overthrowing the bourgeoisie will be a democratic republic. — Vladimir Lenin

To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing. — Theodore Roosevelt

Deists, not religious authoritarians, codified the clear separation of church from state in addition to the division of powers within the state. Deists, not the Continental philosophers, established our democratic republic upon uniquely radical interpretations of constitutional and procedural stability, representation, accountability, and transparency. Deists, not autocrats, formed a more perfect Union that preserved equally for each individual the universal civil liberties inscribed in the Bill of Rights. It was Deists who stood up for Everyman by instituting true equality and freedom for all. — Beth Houston

I think we [Americans] are going to look back and realize that the civil liberties that we've given up in the name of security, the authority that we've given Democratic and Republican presidents, all have contributed to a fraying of the fabric of our democratic republic. — Jeremy Scahill

This is the voice of Vietnam Broadcasting from Hanoi, capitol of the Democratic republic of Vietnam. — Hanoi Hannah

People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy. — Friedrich Engels

As a Republic governed through the utilization of a democratic process, elections are necessary in order to give every United States citizen a voice in the governing of this great nation. — Byron Goines

If you look at satellite photographs of the Far East by night, you'll see a large splotch curiously lacking in light. This area of darkness is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. — Barbara Demick

Those who take oaths to politically powerful secret societies cannot be depended on for loyalty to a democratic republic. — John Quincy Adams