DEMOCRACY
QUOTES
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The
lesson of history is clear: democracy always
wins in the end.
-- Marjorie
Kelly
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if we wish to accomplish in the next 15 years
what we failed to accomplish in the last 15,
we would do well to focus on democratizing structures
of power. That means imagining, and then creating,
economic democracy.
-- Marjorie
Kelly
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Democracy
is about two things. First, it is about purpose. In
the political realm, it's about an overriding concern
for the common good. In the economic realm, it's about
having the common good trump the narrow self-interest
of the financial elite. It's about broadening corporate
purpose from serving shareholders to serving stakeholders,
and releasing executives from the destructive mandate
to maximize shareholder gain at any cost. Second, democracy
is about structures that bring this purpose to life.
It's not about separating good corporations from bad,
but about shaping the system forces that act on all
corporations. It's about consciously crafting new democratic
system structures, structures of voice, structures of
decision making, structures of conflict resolution,
structures of accountability.
-- Marjorie Kelly
We
are experiencing a unique convergence of forces, not
only the forces of scandal, but the forces of change.
We can use this moment to take corporate social responsibility
to the next level, the level of economic democracy.
We can become a new founding generation, completing
the design in the economic realm that our forefathers
began in the political realm. Instead of chasing one
form of corporate wrongdoing at a time, we can put in
place enduring structures of justice, effective structures
of checks and balances. For it is only in this way that
we can truly safeguard the common good, not only for
today, but for generation after generation to come.
-- Marjorie Kelly
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"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... In a world struggling in violence and
dishonesty, the further development of non-violence
- not only as a philosophy but as a way of life,
as a force on the streets, in the market squares,
outside the missile bases, inside the chemical
plants and inside the war industry - becomes one
of the most urgent priorities."
-- Petra Kelly
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We are not afraid to entrust the American people
with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien
philosophies, and competitive values. For a
nation that is afraid to let its people judge
the truth and falsehood in an open market is
a nation that is afraid of its people.
-- John
F. Kennedy
Our
labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups.
They have raised wages, shortened hours, and
provided supplemental benefits. Through collective
bargaining and grievance procedures, they have
brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
-- John
F. Kennedy
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"America
now stands as the world's foremost power. We should
be proud: Not since the age of the Romans have one people
achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans; we
do not seek an empire. We are Americans, trustees of
a vision and a heritage
that commit us to the values of democracy and the universal
cause of human rights."
-- Senator John Kerry
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"Democracy is the absolute value that makes
for human dignity, as well as the only road to
sustained economic development and social justice."
-- Kim Dae-jung
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the anti-war movement should turn itself into
a pro-democracy movement
-- Naomi Klein
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Students
should not only be trained to live in a democracy when
they grow up; they should have the chance to live in
one today.
-- Alfie Kohn
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The
proper goal of an economic democracy agenda is
to replace the global suicide economy ruled by
rapacious and unaccountable global corporations
with a planetary system of local living economies
comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in
the communities they serve and locally owned by
the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
-- David Korten
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"The ideas and principles of democracy should
not be limited to politics, but must pervade all
areas of social life."
-- Bruno Kreisky
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We,
as citizens or members of people's organisations,
can preserve and nourish basic principles needed
for long-term efforts aimed at transforming a
totalitarian and war-torn society into a democratic
one."
-- Katarina Kruhonja
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freedom
rings resoundingly in a democracy each time we
speak freely.
-- Dennis Kucinich
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Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian
regime and replace it with a democratic one is through
violent means. I would like to set the precedent
of political change through political settlement,
not through violence.
-- Aung San Suu Kyi
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"No society has fulfilled its democratic promise
if people go hungry... If some go without food
they have surely been deprived of all power. The
existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy."
--
Frances Moore Lappé
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We’ve come a long way, but we still have a distance
to go before all of our citizens embrace the idea
of a truly interracial democracy, what I like
to call the Beloved Community, a nation at peace
with itself.
-- John R. Lewis
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“We want harmonious development, ... We should
work together for more democratic and law-based
international relations, and a harmonious environment
in which countries respect one another, treat
one another as equals, and different cultures
can emulate and interchange with each other.”
-- Li Zhaoxing
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“Democracy
is the government of the people, by the people,
for the people”
-- Abraham Lincoln
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Without general elections, without unrestricted
freedom of press and assembly, without a free
struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public
institution, becomes a mere semblance of life,
in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active
element.
-- Rosa Luxemburg
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"Democracy
is never a thing done. Democracy is always something
that a nation must be doing."
-- Archibald MacLeish, American poet, public official
(1892-1982)
"I
have tremendous confidence in the capacity of the
poor to transform not only their own lives but also
to build a just, humane, and democratic society."
-- Ruth Manorama
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"Democracy is the most demanding of all forms
of government in terms of the energy, imagination,
and public spirit required of the individual."
-- George C.
Marshall (1880-1959)
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"America:
Socializing the risks, Privatizing the profits, Putting
business in the democracy, Taking the democracy out
of the business."
-- Christopher Masterjohn
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Ensuring the access of all citizens to government
information and to essential information for human
development is a must for every democratic society.
-- Koïchiro Matsuura,
UNESCO Director-General
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Dictatorships
are one-way streets. Democracy boasts twox-way traffic.
-- Albert Moravia
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We
must construct a new set of values and attitudes
to replace the culture of war which, for centuries,
has been influencing the course of civilization.
Winning peace means the triumph of our pledge to
establish, on a democratic basis, a new social framework
of tolerance and generosity from which no one will
feel excluded.
-- Federico Mayor |
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"One
cannot have a trade union or a democratic election
without freedom of speech, freedom of association
and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby
people choose and remove their rulers, there is
no method of securing human rights against the state.
No democracy without human rights, no human rights
without democracy, and no trade union rights without
either. That is our belief; that is our creed."
-- George Meany |
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"Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot
exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist
without development, development cannot exist
without democracy, democracy cannot exist without
respect for the identity and worth of cultures
and peoples."
-- Rigoberta Menchú
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I
don't accept armed struggle. Maybe it was the
way in the '50s and '60s, but we want a democratic
revolution...
-- Evo Morales
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You
can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations
are considered people. -- Bill
Moyers
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The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism
are deeply entwined. -- Bill
Moyers
“I
believe democracy requires a ‘sacred contract’
between journalists and those who put their trust
in us to tell them what we can about how the world
really works.” -- Bill
Moyers
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The
Interfaith Alliance has to become an ongoing sustaining
and powerful movement whose interest is to prove that
religion has a healing side as well as a killing side,
and that democracy is the consequence of conscience
-- Bill Moyers
An
unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people
fed only partisan information and opinion that confirm
their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind
and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined
to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical. And
just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind
of orthodoxy can kill us, too.
-- Bill Moyers
"Neither
democracy nor effective representation is possible until
each participant in the group...devotes a measurable
part of his life to furthering its existence."
-- Lewis Mumford, American social philosopher (1895-1990)
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The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation
of violence and the development of nonviolent
means to combat evil and advance the good.
-- A. J. Muste
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