Pure Democracy Quotes & Sayings

The PM glanced a look of pure malevolence. A terrifying glimpse into what madness, ego and naked ambition it takes to lead a modern democracy. — Alan Dean

Too many in your state [Pennsylvania], as in this [New York], love pure democracy dearly. They seem not to consider that pure democracy, like pure rum, easily produces intoxication, and with it a thousand mad pranks and fooleries. — John Jay

Reagan never cottoned to dictators. He was pure in this notion in a true belief that democracy was the best solution in the world because it spoke to people's hopes and dreams and aspirations, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of speech. — Douglas Brinkley

What am I that I am called upon to have prejudices concerning the universe? — James Branch Cabell

Democracy, or "majority rules," is another trick of our society to force us to do things we don't want to do. Even if we actually lived in a pure democracy (and the system we do live in is not even close), where everyone got a single vote on every subject, forcing the minority to obey the majority is no different to one man, if he had the power, forcing everyone else to do what he wanted them to-simply because he could. — William J. Murray

I figure that my staff will be less reluctant to work overtime if I work longer hours than they do. — David Ogilvy

I could not imagine that we should make much of an effort to preserve remainders of natural beauty in conquered Poland. — Fritz Todt

There has been a huge advance in technology, which has improved the safety of the cars incredibly, but there are still some heavy crash impacts and in certain circumstances there is still the chance of fire today. — Jackie Stewart

The science of nonviolence can alone lead one to pure democracy. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is not, perhaps, unreasonable to conclude, that a pure and perfect democracy is a thing not attainable by man, constituted as he is of contending elements of vice and virtue, and ever mainly influenced by the predominant principle of self-interest. It may, indeed, be confidently asserted, that there never was that government called a republic, which was not ultimately ruled by a single will, and, therefore, (however bold may seem the paradox,) virtually and substantially a monarchy. — Alexander Fraser Tytler

Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life. — Mikhail Gorbachev

There was an idea that God created man different from other animals, because man was rational and animals had drives and instincts. That idea of a rational man that was specially created went out the window when Darwin showed that we evolved from animal ancestors, that we have instincts, much as do animals, and that our instincts are very important. It was a much more sophisticated, nuanced, and rich view of the human mind. — Eric Kandel

Nothing in Death Hunt makes a great deal of sense, though the scenery is rugged and the snowscapes beautiful. — Vincent Canby

A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of non-violence alone can lead one to pure democracy. Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment. It is a blasphemy to say non-violence can be practiced only by individuals and never by nations which are composed of individuals. The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on non-violence. A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy. — Mahatma Gandhi

The problem with American democracy is the American corporation, which is a slave holder construct, pure and simple. It's totally invasive, and people are as tightly controlled within the walls of a corporation as they are in a totalitarian society. — Richard Grossman

The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy. — Lord Acton

A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason. — Noah Webster

Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence. — Paul Klee

When the Furies were released in the Middle East, an evil emerged beyond my worst imaginings.
The joy of the Middle East has been replaced by fear, pervasive in Iraq and Syria and darkening the lives of people throughout the region. This is why refugees have been flowing out of the Middle East by the millions for Europe. If President Bush's seeds of democracy or the Arab Spring had bloomed, these families wouldn't be risking everything to leave. Many in the region have simply lost all hope, which is understandable. If you lived in Libya after the fall of Gadhafi, you'd be terrified. You can't work, you can't sell your goods, your children can't go to school, you can't even drive around without fear of being kidnapped by bandits or terrorists. It's not a place where people can be happy and even marginally prosperous. It's pure chaos. It's worse in Iraq and Syria. — Richard Engel

I'm not a size 0, and I'm nowhere close to it. But, I don't want anyone to know what I am so I like to design clothes so you don't know what's going on under there. — Rachel Roy

Every minute brings a new opportunity. Every minute brings new growth, new experiences. — Mario Cuomo

When you open it up like that, you're effectively saying there is no right answer. And in the absence of a right answer, pluralism is the only option. And pluralism will lead to secularism, and to democracy, and to human rights. We must all focus on those values without worrying about whether atheism is the most intellectually pure approach. I genuinely believe that if we focus on the pluralistic nature of interpretation and on democracy, human rights, and secularism - on these values - we'll get to a time of peace and stability in Muslim-majority countries that then allows for conversations like this. Questioning whether God really exists would become a choice, open to all. — Sam Harris

But it does not require much effort to see that the dialogue in liberal democracy is of a peculiar kind because its aim is to maintain the domination of the mainstream and not to undermine it. A deliberation is believed to make sense only if the mainstream orthodoxy is sure to win politically. Today's 'dialogue' politics are a pure form of the right-is-might politics, cleverly concealed by the ostentatiously vacuous rhetoric of all-inclusiveness. — Ryszard Legutko

It may be concluded that a pure democracy ... can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. — James Madison

But American statesmen have studied the constitutions of other states more than that of their own, and have succeeded in obscuring the American system in the minds of the people, and giving them in its place pure and simple democracy, which is its false development or corruption. Under the influence of this false development, the people were fast losing sight of the political truth that, though the people are sovereign, it is the organic, not the inorganic people, the territorial people, not the people as simple population, and were beginning to assert the absolute God-given right of the majority to govern. All the changes made in the bosom of the States themselves have consisted in removing all obstacles to the irresponsible will of the majority, leaving minorities and individuals at their mercy. This tendency to a centralized democracy had more to do with provoking secession and rebellion than the anti-slavery sentiments of the Northern, Central, and Western States. — Orestes Augustus Brownson

But the West is trying to weaken Islam from outside and inside. They attack our people and invade our countries from outside, and they weaken us from within with ideas like secularism, liberalism and democracy. This is all designed to contaminate our pure Islam. — Abu Bakar Bashir

Alexis de Tocqueville warned that as the economy and government of America got bigger, citizens could become smaller: less practiced in the forms of everyday power, more dependent on vast distant social machines, more isolated and atomized--and therefore more susceptible to despotism.

He warned that if the "habits of the heart" fed by civic clubs and active self-government evaporated, citizens would regress to pure egoism. They would stop thinking about things greater than their immediate circle. Public life would disappear. And that would only accelerate their own disempowerment.

This is painfully close to a description of the United States since Trump and Europe since Brexit. And the only way to reverse this vicious cycle of retreat and atrophy is to reverse it: to find a sense of purpose that is greater than the self, and to exercise power with others and for others in democratic life. — Eric Liu

Real good-breeding is independent of the forms and refinements of what has assumed to itself the name of society. — George MacDonald

Either 'the group' is superior or the individual is superior. Marxism, socialism, fascism, and pure democracy are all forms that give power to 'the group' and then use violence to force individuals to obey the dictates of 'the group'. The concept of liberty is one in which the individual - in the exercise of his unalienable rights - is superior to every and all powers. That is what the Founders intended. That is what we are supposed to have under the 'contracts' of the Declaration of Independence and the state and federal constitutions. That is what I am entitled to as an American. That is what I insist upon. And that is what I will kill for. — Dave Champion

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. — James Madison

All his life he would hold this moment as exemplary of what love was. It was not wanting anything more, nor was it expecting people to exceed what they had just accomplished; it was simply feeling so complete. — John Irving

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. — Noam Chomsky

As a form of government, imperialism does not seek or require the consent of the governed. It is a pure form of tyranny. The American attempt to combine domestic democracy with such tyrannical control over foreigners is hopelessly contradictory and hypocritical. A country can be democratic or it can be imperialistic, but it cannot be both. — Chalmers Johnson

America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism. — Mark Levin

The result of cutting [political power] up into little bits is simply that the man who can sweep the greatest number into one heap will govern the rest ... In a pure democracy the ruling men will be the wirepullers and their friends; but they will no more be on an equality with the voters than soldiers of Ministers of State are on an equality with the subjects of monarchy. — James Fitzjames Stephen

Although the frankfurter originated in Frankfurt, Germany, we have long since made it our own, a twin pillar of democracy along with Mom's apple pie. In fact, now that Mom's apple pie comes frozen and baked by somebody who isn't Mom, the hot dog stands alone. What it symbolizes remains pure, even if what it contains does not. — William Zinsser

All envy is proportionate to desire; we are uneasy at the attainments of another, according as we think our own happiness would be advanced by the addition of that which he withholds from us. — Samuel Johnson

It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity. — Alexander Hamilton

Syllables govern the world. — George Bernard Shaw

The international community can't trust such a government. If the government of Iran wants the international community to believe in what it says, it should try to bring true, pure democracy into the country. The political solution to the energy issue or the nuclear case is democracy in Iran. — Shirin Ebadi