#democracy

Informed by our sad experience of history, we require nothing short of a foundation for lasting democracy. ↗

— Ibrahim Babangida

#experience #foundation #history #informed #lasting

The history of our country is not the history of any other country in the world which is either practicing advanced democracy or struggling to lay the foundation for democracy. ↗

— Ibrahim Babangida

#any #country #democracy #either #foundation

If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama. ↗

— Irving Babbitt

#democracy #essence #man #melodrama #might

To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy. ↗

— Irving Babbitt

#another way #concerned #continue #democracy #expansive

Most people associate reading with laying on the beach. They don't see that it's crucial for a democracy! ↗

— David Baldacci

#beach #crucial #democracy #laying #most

Jordan has to show the Arab world that there's another way of doing things. We're a monarchy, yes, but if we can show democracy that leads to a two-, three-, four-party system - left, right and center - in a couple of years' time, then the Muslim Brotherhood will no longer be something to contend with. ↗

— Abdallah II

#another way #arab #arab world #brotherhood #center

We want to be, I think, an example for the rest of the Arab world, because there are a lot of people who say that the only democracy you can have in the Middle East is the Muslim Brotherhood. ↗

— King Abdullah II

#arab world #because #brotherhood #democracy #east

The fate of every democracy, of every government based on the sovereignty of the people, depends on the choices it makes between these opposite principles, absolute power on the one hand, and on the other the restraints of legality and the authority of tradition. ↗

— John Acton

#absolute power #authority #based #between #choices

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#democracy #funny #humour #politics #revolution

democracy is about the conditions that make it possible for ordinary people to better their lives by becoming political beings and by making power responsive to their hopes and needs. What is at stake in democratic politics is whether ordinary men and women can recognize that their concerns are best protected and cultivated under a regime whose actions are governed by principles of commonality, equality, and fairness, a regime in which taking part in politics becomes a way of staking out and sharing in a common life and its forms of self-fulfillment. Democracy is not about bowling together but about managing together those powers that immediately and significantly affect the lives and circumstances of others and one’s self. ↗

— Sheldon S. Wolin

#power #equality