Quotes & Sayings About Direct Democracy

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. — Jurgen Habermas

Social Democracy preached against capitalism for half a century. After the November revolution the Reds had the opportunity to direct capitalism into the proper paths: but nothing happened! — Julius Streicher

My links with [Mahatma] Gandhi now are very political links because I do not believe there is any other politics available to us in the late twentieth century, a period of a totalitarianism linked with the market. There is really no other way you can do politics and create freedom for people without the kinds of instruments he revived. Civil disobedience is a way to create permanent democracy, perennial democracy, a direct democracy. — Vandana Shiva

The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy. — Noam Chomsky

Listening to the Gospel on Palm Sunday, it struck me that many people criticise Pontius Pilate for his role in the affair while letting the multitude go scot free. Pilate did what little he could to dissuade them from the extremely unpleasant course of action on which they were set, but the multitude kept shouting for a crucifixion. Pilate could not have done more without provoking a riot. The crucifixion when it happened was a victory for direct democracy against the effete, liberal paternalism of Pilate.
If I am right, and the crucifixion be seen as an early victory for the principle of direct democracy, then it must follow ... that good men should struggle to confound and frustrate the multitude whenever possible. — Auberon Waugh

For police themselves, the consequence of [911 policing] has been the emergence of a siege mentality...the alienation of officers from the communities they police interferes with the effective exercise of their basic authority, forcing police to rely inordinately on the use of force. As strangers, police feel compelled to draw upon 'preemptively coercive means such as intimidation and threats' if not the direct application of force...not only is such coercion antithetical to policing a democracy, it may create the very resistance it is intended to forestall, and lead to self-fulfilling prophecies and a downward spiral in which police become more aggressive and youths embittered and resistant. — George Kelling

Change from below, the formulation of demands from the populace to end unacceptable injustice, supported by direct action, has played a far larger part in shaping British democracy than most constitutional lawyers, political commentators, historians or statesmen have ever cared to admit. Direct action in a democratic society is fundamentally an educational exercise. — Tony Benn

I'm all for experimenting with sortition - randomly selected representative bodies of citizens. But I don't favor direct democracy. We're busy. We have lives. There is reddit. Who has time to work out the right answer to the thousand policy choices a gov't must make all the time? — Lawrence Lessig

To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection. — Woody Allen

Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens. — Howard Zinn

A democracy flirts with the danger of becoming a slave in direct ratio to the numbers of its citizens who work, but do not own / or who own, but do not work; or who distribute, as politicians do, but do not produce. The danger of the "slave state" disappears in ratio to the numbers of people who own property and admit its attendant responsibilities under God. They can call their souls their own because they own and administer something other than their souls. Thus they are free. — Fulton J. Sheen

Representative democracy betrays the electorate when laws have no roots in the people but in oligarchies. Studies on the concept and modalities of direct democracy are therefore becoming more topical — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

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

The war we now face is a fundamental one. Democracy is a product of Western societal values that prize the individual and individual freedom. The very idea of a form of government in which power is vested in the people, who rule through their freely chosen representatives, is at odds with Middle Eastern and Islamic cultures in which the only sovereign is Allah. Because Allah alone is sovereign, man may not change Allah's rules. There can be no room left for religious liberty or pluralism. Contrary man-made laws have no place in such a society. Accordingly, only one ruler is needed to enforce divine law, law that may not be questioned. Democracy, on the other hand, by its very nature gives people the room to enact new laws to meet with the changing needs - whether real or merely perceived - of a given society. Thus from the Islamic perspective, a democratic system of government is a direct affront to Allah's supremacy. — Jay Sekulow

Everyone knew that democracy-direct rule by all the people-required such spartan, sel denying virtue on the part of all the people that it was likely to survive only where poverty made upright behavior necessary for the perpetuation of the race. — Bernard Bailyn

The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed. — Friedrich August Von Hayek

I don't support direct democracy because I want a life, and that means I want to select people who work for me who do that sort of work for me. — Lawrence Lessig

These various remedies, eugenic, educational, ethical, populist and socialist, all assume that either the voters are inherently competent to direct the course of affairs or that they are making progress towards such an ideal. I think [democracy] is a false ideal. — Walter Lippmann

The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies [Marxism/fascism/socialism v. democracy/capitalism] to enable them [the Illuminati] to divide larger and larger portions of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other. — Myron Coureval Fagan

And when they do spin out of control there are important ramifications that affect America, not just its direct national interest but its broader interests as a nation which has thought of itself as a beacon to other nations, of freedom, liberty, democracy, whatever. — John Pomfret

Democracy is direct self-government over all the people, for all the people, by all the people. — Theodore Parker

Fighting for equality is often misunderstood as simply being offered the same terms as men on paper. In many ways we already have that. What we don't have is emancipation: the opportunity to be free of social and external shackles that perpetuate inequality and women's lower position. Women around the world are now demanding more: paid work, a life for their children, but also the right to be listened to, a political voice, direct democracy, and the right to a full civic life. That isn't won by keeping quiet: it's won by physically and psychologically going on strike, by shouting back, and leaning out. — Dawn Foster

Democracy entails a correlation between the public interest as expressed by a majority of the population and the governmental policies that affect them. The term encompasses various manifestations, including direct, participatory and representative democracy, but Governments must be responsive to people and not to special interests such as the military-industrial complex, financial bankers and transnational corporations. Democracy is inclusive and does not privilege an anthropological aristocracy. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

The legislator should direct his attention above all to the education of youth; for the neglect of education does harm to the constitution. The citizen should be molded to suit the form of government under which he lives. For each government has a peculiar character which originally formed and which continues to preserve it. The character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy. — Aristotle.

California has often led the country, indeed the world, in the technology, consumption, trends, lifestyles, and of course, mass entertainment. It is where the car found its earliest and fullest expression, where suburbs blossomed, where going to gym replaced going to church, where forces that lead so many to assume that direct democracy is the wave of the future - declining political parties, telecommuting, new technology, the internet generation 0 are all most well developed in this vast land. — Fareed Zakaria

When someone at the State Department proclaims Facebook to be the most organic tool for promoting democracy the world has ever seen - that's a direct quote - it may help in the short run by getting more people onto Facebook by making it more popular with dissidents. — Evgeny Morozov

The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth ... — Petra Kelly

The great social justice changes in our country have happened when people came together, organized, and took direct action. It is this right that sustains and nurtures our democracy today. The civil rights movement, the labor movement, the women's movement, and the equality movement for our LGBT brothers and sisters are all manifestations of these rights. — Dolores Huerta

The more routine that systematised activities are, the more nearly they are of the monotonous character seen in the habits of social animals and the less necessary are master builders; the more novel actions are, the more necessary are master builders. Dislike of the leader and the promoter, though linked emotionally to progressivism, is linked logically to total conservatism. Conversely, an authoritarian approach, natural enough in the instigator of new activities, is unjustified in the mere overseer of routines. — Bertrand De Jouvenel

Eventually I foresee voting on the Internet, which will lead to much more direct democracy. — Dick Gephardt

To justify such direct forms of imperialism and oppression, whites developed the IDEA of whiteness to define a privileged social category elevated above everyone who wasn't included in it. This made it possible to reconcile conquest, treachery, slavery, and genocide, with the nation's newly professed ideals of democracy, freedom, and human dignity. If whiteness define what it meant to be human, then it was seen as less off an offense against the Constitution (not to mention God) to dominate and oppress those who happened to fall outside that definition as the United States marched onward toward what was popularly perceived as its Manifest Destiny. — Allan G. Johnson

May it please your Majesty I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here. — William Lenthall

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people. — Walter Lippmann

Direct democracy is lazy anarchy, for people who don't want to be governed but are too lazy to govern themselves. They want participation served to them. — Heather Marsh

Corbyn was not elected by the parliamentary party but by people who have the luxury of sounding off without the responsibility of answering for it. Corbyn represents the idiocy of direct democracy, and the culture of resentment that takes advantage of it. — Roger Scruton

Under a system in which no single question is submitted to the electorate for direct decision, an ardent minority for or against a particular measure may often count for more than an apathetic majority. — Patrick, Baron Devlin

A short exposure to the convention convinced me that the Internet may save the Democracy in that it is a way for the people, for the citizens, to have some direct influence on the government. — John Jay Hooker