Quotes & Sayings About The Democratic Process

Even though I grew up and I didn't always like getting dragged to the meetings or the rallies or the speeches, I developed a very strong respect for participating in a democratic process. — Julian Castro

Debate is never finished; it can't be, lest democracy be no longer democratic and society be stripped of or forfeit its autonomy. Democracy means that the citizen's task is never complete. Democracy exists through persevering and unyielding citizens' concern. Once that concern is put to sleep, democracy expires.
And so there is no, and cannot be, a democracy, an autonomous society, without autonomous citizens - that is, citizens endowed with individual liberty and individual responsibility for the ways they use it. That liberty is another value - though unthinkable in separation from the value of democracy. Democracy rests on the freedom of its citizens, and citizens rest their confidence of being free and the courage to be free on the democracy of their polis. The two make each other and are made in the process of that making. — Zygmunt Bauman

We need to decouple the movement for comprehensive immigration reform and justice for immigrants from the legislative process and from the Democratic Party process. They are too linked. — Luis Gutierrez

I think in the world we live in where television is the principal source of information for most people, it really affects the balance of the democratic process. The fairness of the democratic process. — Alexander Stille

If one man can be allowed to determine for himself what is law, every man can. That means first chaos, then tyranny. Legal process is an essential part of the democratic process. — Felix Frankfurter

The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil, and Constitutional right - subject neither to the democratic process nor to arguments grounded in social utility. — L. Neil Smith

If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways to be hospitable to the unusual person. You don't get innovation as a democratic process. You almost get it as an anti-democratic process. Certainly you get it as an antithetical process, so you have to have an environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation. — Max De Pree

In a democratic society, there is always a struggle between the machinery of national security and press freedom, and the public's right to know is usually the loser. When our national security czars become, in effect, our media gatekeepers, we lose one of the essential cornerstones of a true democracy - an informed citizenry. Distracted by the manufactured flow of information produced by a news media that has fallen under the spell of its own official sources, and beguiled by militaristic and patriotic Hollywood myth-making, the American public is largely benighted when it comes to understanding the wars and covert violence carried out in our name. Spooked will explain exactly how this process occurs and what happens to journalists who dare to break the rules. The — Nicholas Schou

There is a democratic process in the party, and that can be operated at any time. But am I going to resign? No. Of course not. No. No. I will carry on. — Jeremy Corbyn

Now, I don't want to come over all cynical, but doesn't that imply that you could dispense with the entire democratic process and simply award power to the party with the most money in its campaign fund? Yes. It does. Maybe not always, just every, single time in history so far. — Russell Brand

Rights are either God-given or evolve out of the democratic process. Most rights are based on the ability of people to agree on a social contract, the ability to make and keep agreements. — Rush Limbaugh

While a democratic process is morally desirable for arriving at a decision, it doesn't necessarily produce the best outcomes. — Pawan Mishra

Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam. — Lauren Beukes

We are here today because of grass-roots conservatives all over the place. That's the way the democratic process is supposed to work. It's not supposed to be a bunch of guys in a smoky room in Austin picking the next Senator. — Ted Cruz

What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one. — Walter E. Williams

People may be due the benefits of a democratic electoral process. But in the United States, content curators appropriately have a First Amendment right to present their content as they see fit. — Jonathan Zittrain

Whether you voted for me or not, going through the Democratic process had made me a better candidate. I am a smarter, better candidate. — Andrew Cuomo

I think the Democratic electorate is similarly very energized. In both cycles we have new folks coming into the system who had previously been outside of the system, who may not even be Democrats. In both cycles we have a very well-known candidate who understands the process and a candidate who had to learn the rules. — Leah D. Daughtry

The real world of American society is one which it is very misleading to call simply a democracy. Of course, it is in a sense a democracy, but it is one in which there are enormous inequities in the distribution of power and force. For example, the entire commercial and industrial system is in principle excluded from the democratic process, including everything that goes on within it — Noam Chomsky

As a whole, the election process before the election and on the day of election was successful, and I think Azerbaijan had normal and democratic elections, — Ilham Aliyev

I am a relatively new Member to this Chamber, and it is troublesome to me and I can tell Members it is getting very troublesome to my constituents when they hear this repeated consistent drum beat of a corruption of the democratic process. — Jay Inslee

It's important to recognize that expanding the circle of opportunity
and increasing the democratic potential of our own society,
as well as those across the world, is a continuing process of inclusion. — Hillary Clinton

Access to governance has to be guaranteed with transparent systems that deliver responses and outcomes. The strengthening of democratic governance empowers the population to become active partners in the growth process. — Narendra Modi

Few businessmen are capable of being in politics, they don't understand the democratic process, they have neither the tolerance or the depth it takes. Democracy isn't a business. — Malcolm Forbes

This massive ascendancy of corporate power over democratic process is probably the most ominous development since the end of World War II, and for the most part "the free world" seems to be regarding it as merely normal. — Wendell Berry

To make it hard, to make it difficult almost impossible for people to cast a vote is not in keeping with the democratic process. — John Lewis

What we want the folks in Ethiopia to know is that we are behind them in the democratic process. We know it is not perfect, as we are still working on ours; but we wish them success in this great and noble endeavor. — Jack Kingston

If you look at the democratic process as a game of chess, there have to be many, many moves before you get to checkmate. And simply because you do not make any checkmate in three moves does not mean it's stalemate. There's a vast difference between no checkmate and stalemate. This is what the democratic process is like. — Aung San Suu Kyi

Growing up, when we would get dragged to these events, I didn't want to be there. Over time, as we got older, I developed a real appreciation of the importance of being involved in the democratic process. — Julian Castro

Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process. — Debbie Stabenow

If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end. — Bayard Rustin

I wish to assure you that there can never be any return to the state of armed conflict which existed before our commitment to peace and the democratic process of election under the Lancaster House agreement. — Robert Mugabe

Clear limits should be set on how power is exercised in cyberspace by companies as well as governments through the democratic political process and enforced through law. — Rebecca MacKinnon

One of the notable aspects of the democratic process is that one need not know anything about a subject in order to pass laws about it. — Jeff Cooper

One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty. — H.L. Mencken

Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process. — Barry Goldwater

Civil disobedience, as I put it to the audience, was not the problem, despite the warnings of some that it threatened social stability, that it led to anarchy. The greatest danger, I argued, was civil obedience, the submission of individual conscience to governmental authority. Such obedience led to the horrors we saw in totalitarian states, and in liberal states it led to the public's acceptance of war whenever the so-called democratic government decided on it ...
In such a world, the rule of law maintains things as they are. Therefore, to begin the process of change, to stop a war, to establish justice, it may be necessary to break the law, to commit acts of civil disobedience, as Southern black did, as antiwar protesters did. — Howard Zinn

I've actually thought very little about solo work up until just very recently. Most of it is because in my band, Incubus, it is very much a collaborative effort. I do what I do in the band, and everyone plays their respective parts, but in the end, we are sort of a democratic process. — Brandon Boyd

His experience on the bench was crucial in forming Taft's political vision. He disliked the rough and tumble of partisanship; he much preferred the quiet of the study. The image of the dispassionate jurist weighing the competing arguments of the litigants embodied how he saw the governing process. Elections, campaigning, and pressing the flesh were to him necessary evils in a democratic society, but Taft thought that he was a gregarious creature who loved humanity. However, such traits were for the golf course or the salon or the friendly conversation. When it came time to make policy, the ethos of the jurist dominated. — Lewis L. Gould

The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest. — Edward Bernays

The democratic process is supposed to be one person one vote, but it turns out that money is talking louder than the votes. — James Hansen

The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal - that you can gather votes like box tops - is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process. — Adlai E. Stevenson

Let us say in passing that since (philosophical) remedies are often worse than the malady, our age, in order to be cured of the Plato sickness, has swallowed such doses of a relativist, vaguely skeptical, lightly spiritualist and insipidly moralist medicine, that it is in the process of gently dying, in the small bed of its supposed democratic comfort. — Alain Badiou

Both the fragmentation of power and the conflicting government policies are rooted in the political realities of a democratic system that operates by enacting detailed and specific legislation. Such a system tends to give undue political power to small groups that have highly concentrated interests, to give greater weight to obvious, direct, and immediate effects of government action than to possibly more important but concealed, indirect, and delayed effects, to set in motion a process that sacrifices the general interest to serve special interests, rather than the other way around. There is, as it were, an invisible hand in politics that operates in precisely the opposite direction to Adam Smith's invisible hand. Individuals who intend only to promote the general interest are led by the invisible political hand to promote a special interest that they had no intention to promote. — Milton Friedman

Without free speech one cannot claim other liberties, or defend them when they are attacked. Without free speech one cannot have a democratic process, which requires the statement and testing of policy proposals and party platforms. Without free speech one cannot have a due process at law, in which one can defend oneself, accuse, collect and examine evidence, make a case or refute one. Without free speech there cannot be genuine education and research, enquiry, debate, exchange of information, challenges to falsehood, questioning of governments, proposal and examination of opinion. Without free speech there cannot be a free press, which...is necessary...as one of the two essential estates of a free society (the other being an independent judiciary). — A.C. Grayling

The proper way to make policy decisions under our Constitution in America is for the people to do so through the democratic process. — Ted Cruz

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

Record labels, which used to have complete control, are essentially irrelevant. The process of a band exposing itself to the world is extremely democratic and there are no barriers. Music is no longer a commodity, it's an environment, or atmospheric element. Consumers have much more choice and you see people indulging in the specificity of their tastes dramatically more. They only bother with music they like. — Steve Albini

Even in South Carolina, as badly as we did, and we did very badly, we won the votes of people 29 years of age or younger. The future of the Democratic Party, the future of this country is involving young people in the political process, getting them to stand up for their rights. — Bernie Sanders

I am happy to note that the BJP as an organization is looking to creatively harness Power of Social Media. We have to ensure our Youth stays engaged in our Democratic process. We have to make our Democratic process accessible to them. Social media is an important tool for this. — Narendra Modi

The Chief Whip's job is trying to make sure that the Government - and MPs elected as part of the governing party - deliver the promises that they were elected on. That's a healthy part of the democratic process. — Geoff Hoon

For more than a century, states have sought to protect the integrity of the democratic process at the state and local level by regulating corporate spending in elections. — Eric Schneiderman

The democratic process will always favor small, well-organized groups at the expense of large, diffuse groups. — Charles Wheelan

As long as there is democracy, there will be people wanting to play jazz because nothing else will ever so perfectly capture the democratic process in sound. Jazz means working things out musically with other people. You have to listen to other musicians and play with them even if you don't agree with what they're playing. It teaches you the very opposite of racism and anti-Semitism. It teaches you that the world is big enough to accommodate us all. — Wynton Marsalis

An industrial policy worked in Taiwan only because the state was able to shield its planning technocrats from political pressures so that they could reinforce the market and make decisions according to criteria of efficiency - in other words, worked because Taiwan was not governed democratically. An American industrial policy is much less likely to improve its economic competitiveness, precisely because America is more democratic than Taiwan or the Asian NIEs. The planning process would quickly fall prey to pressures from Congress either to protect inefficient industries or to promote ones
favored by special interests. — Francis Fukuyama

It is equally unreasonable to run a university as a "participatory democracy," the approach to governance that once existed in Europe. That approach in European institutions of higher learning was appealing to professors because it was democratic. But those institutions also suffered because they lacked an executive decision-making process; making changes became virtually impossible. — Henry Rosovsky

If man will not recognize the inequalities around him and voluntarily, through the gospel plan, come to the aid of his brother, he will find that through 'a democratic process' he will be forced to come to the aid of his brother. The government will take from the 'haves' and give to the 'have nots.' Both have lost their freedom. Those who 'have,' lost their freedom to give voluntarily of their own free will and in the way they desire. Those who 'have not,' lost their freedom because they did not earn what they received. They got 'something for nothing,' and they will neither appreciate the gift nor the giver of the gift. — Howard W. Hunter

Virtually everywhere in the world, people still wake up and want their country to be more like the United States than any other nation. We are the envy of the world because of what we stand for and how our democratic process, flawed as it may often seem to be, operates. We should take pride in that. — Eliot Spitzer

Democracy. For something that has no specific dictionary definition, it is as open to interpretation as any holy book is, and as wide open to as many translative abuses, yet without any definitive definition the process means something very different to every person it impacts upon. I would add that until we get an accurate definition the word is meaningless, and when the process is so open to interpretation that the Koch Bros can buy it, legally, without any fuss, that action in itself is not democratic, but neither is it illegal? All that before i hit the dangers of party politics ... — Steve Merrick

It is not enough to profess faith in the democratic process; we must do something about it. — Ella T. Grasso

Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process. — Greg Bear

Because the democratic process operates apart from the Church, it possesses no corrective against corrupted human nature beyond its own equally corrupt judiciary, which ends by judging not only points of law but morality itself. — Solange Hertz

If I am wrong and you are right then the democratic process of the Australian community will vindicate you and condemn me. — John Howard

The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves. — John Ralston Saul

Well what are you looking at me for? If this is a democratic process, I've been outvoted," he said in exasperation. "This is why democracy doesn't work. The crazy people always outnumber the sane people. — Joseph R. Lallo

European and American companies companies do create jobs for some people but what they're mainly going to do is make an already wealthy elite wealthier, and increase its greed and strong desire to hang on to power. So immediately and in the long run, these companies - harm the democratic process a great deal. — Aung San Suu Kyi

I am no historian, but Hungary is a country which has never known democracy - and by that, I mean not a democratic political system, but an organic process which has mobilised the entire country's society. In the case of Hungary, this development was blocked by the growth of the Ottoman empire in the 16th century. — Imre Kertesz

I love disagreements. I love the democratic process. If I'm in a room where everybody agrees, I start to nod off. — Gina McCarthy

If we could shut down all sport hunting in a moment, we would. [ ... ] Only 7% of Americans are hunters. That means there are more of us than there are of them. It is simply a matter of democracy. The majority rules in a democracy. We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States ... We will take it species by species until all hunting is stopped in California. Then we will take it state by state. — Wayne Pacelle

When people treat corruption as a routine part of the process, you have something far worse than wrongdoing or moral failing. You have a political cancer that breeds cynicism about democratic government and infects all of society. — Edward Brooke

I would have a democratic process for people to get together and talk about the way they want the government to conduct business with China. — Tsai Ing-wen

For the institutions of the European Union are at present incomplete. A European Senate is badly needed to complete them. By creating an upper chamber in the European parliament, a new bridge could be built between national political classes, which retain democratic legitimacy, and the decision-making process in Brussels. Such a Senate should be recruited by indirect election from exisiting national parliaments. — Larry Siedentop

You cannot use the democratic process for the procurement of excellence. — Kevin McCloud

No candidate dares to look for a new campaign model that could really enhance the democratic process. Instead we are left with the current one which makes our candidates look like hucksters. — Greta Van Susteren

The democratic process on which this nation was founded should not be restricted to the political process, but should be applied to the industrial operation as well. — Albert Gallatin

I think the success of democracy is not really police security; it's the presence of a broad middle class. The stronger the middle class of a people is, the less you have to worry about one group coming in and exploiting the democratic process for its own ends. — Abdallah II Of Jordan

Snohetta promotes a more democratic workplace atmosphere than most other architectural offices. This may merely reflect prevalent employment practices in Scandinavia, but Snohetta places a stronger emphasis on group participation in the design process than typical high-style firms. — Martin Filler

The machinery of the democratic process is really no different today from what it was 150 years ago. — Steven Spielberg

The democratic process is only as great as the people who participate in it. — Jeff Miller

The only way that you can keep moving forward, finding other ways of expressing things about this increasingly complicated world that we live in, is by listening and observing not only to life around you but to the other people who are in the room. It's not about a sort of, you know, a sense that you have to be democratic about these things, it's a question of creativity that the process of making theatre is a collaborative process, and it is not in, it is not a question of, you know, I have no interest in paying lip service to it, for me it's absolutely fundamental. — Simon McBurney

Credible reporting indicates that Al Qaeda is moving forward with its plans to carry out a large-scale attack in the United States in an effort to disrupt our democratic process ... — Tom Ridge

Creation, whether it's writing, painting or whatever, is essentially despotic and autocratic in nature, because it's the work of one mind and one mind alone which has absolute power of life or death over this sentence, or that phrase or whatever it is. It brooks no interference and can only work if it's the one mind doing it. Reading, on the other hand, interpretation, is inherently, intrinsically democratic, because it is fundamentally a process of negotiation between the mind and the text, between the expectations you bring to it and the satisfactions and disappointments you take away from it. — Philip Pullman

It was an honour for me to have been able to work with Mr. Mandela in the process that led to the adoption of the interim constitution and our first democratic elections in April 1994. — F. W. De Klerk

The Senate has unlimited debate; in the House, debate is ruthlessly circumscribed. There is frequent discussion as to which technique most effectively frustrates democratic process. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The future of the Democratic Party, the future of this country is involving young people in the political process, getting them to stand up for their rights, dealing with student debt, which I got to tell you is just crushing people all over this country, making public colleges and universities tuition free, those are the ideas we are bringing out, demanding the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. This is what younger people, working class people want. That is the future of the Democratic Party. — Bernie Sanders

This leads to a question - if a great many people are for a certain project, is it necessarily right? If the vast majority is for it, is it even more certainly right? This, to be sure, is one of the tricky points of democracy. The minority often turns out to be right, and though one believes in the efficacy of the democratic process, one has also to recognize that the demand of the many for a particular project at a particular time may mean only disaster. — Frances Perkins

It's really Democrats who are fighting for working families and small businesses and trying to address the biggest problems that we have, which are huge disparities in incomes and wealth and money influencing the Democratic process. — Cynthia Dill

The next little thing about this vote-for-the-lesser-evil trick, of course - and this is no secret to anyone anymore - is that it drives all the "serious" candidates toward what is commonly referred to as the "moderate center," even if these serious candidates aren't, in fact, moderate or centrist in any meaningful sense and the so-called center moves further to the right with each election cycle. For nearly two decades now this process has been steadily advancing on the Democratic side, as liberals are trained to accept the idea that the national majority will never accept a true labor party, or any candidate perceived as "soft" on defense. — Matt Taibbi

I am a conservative Republican, a firm believer in free market capitalism. A free market system allows all parties to compete, which ensures the best and most competitive project emerges, and ensures a fair, democratic process. — Sarah Palin

I'm the one who initiated the democratic process. — Jean-Claude Duvalier

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

This is the democratic process at work, What you're seeing with this process is the Iraqi people embracing American-style democracy. — Condoleezza Rice

If everybody is happy, then something is wrong with the democratic process. — Abdallah II Of Jordan

Our goal is to get sport hunting in the same category as **** fighting and dog fighting. We are going to use the ballot box and the democratic process to stop all hunting in the United States. — Wayne Pacelle

As artists, we have an opportunity to help the public evolve, raise consciousness and awareness, teach, heal, enlighten and inspire in ways the democratic process may not be able to touch. So we keep it moving. — Lauryn Hill

There was a time in the United States when most of our financial institutions were local. Which essentially meant that local communities were able to create their own credit, or their own money, in response to their own needs. We still depended on banks, but it was a much more democratic process. — David Korten

If we want more trade in the world, we should establish bilateral trade agreements with other democratic countries. That way we can control the decision-making process. The major economic countries of the world will enter into those agreements. — Dana Rohrabacher

Nothing else will ever capture the democratic process in sound as perfectly as Jazz. — Wynton Marsalis

What my job is, is to get on with getting the process of democratic politics, back on the road, entrenching the peace settlement, and I ask you to judge me on my record. — Peter Hain

It is important for us to be able to meet and greet the people that we serve. And if we start having police presence everywhere we go, it's going to create a chilling effect on discourse, and it creates an incredible assault on the democratic process. — Jackie Speier