#democracy

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words. ↗

— Langston Hughes

#freedom #liars #liberty #poem #poetry

I realize that what happened in Bosnia could happen anywhere in the world, particularly in places that are diverse and have a history of conflict. It only takes bad leadership for a country to go up in flames, for people of different ethnicity, color, or religion to kill each other as if they had nothing in common whatsoever. Having a democratic constitution, laws that secure human rights, police that maintain order, a judicial system, and freedom of speech don't ultimately guarantee long lasting peace. If greedy or bloodthirsty leaders come to power, it can all go down. It happened to us. It can happen to you. ↗

— Savo Heleta

#bosnia-and-herzegovina #bosnian-war #democracy #government #history

Love of democracy can be likened to a mother's love for her son.It must be cherished,nurtured and protected for all of time ↗

— J.R. Ortiz

#freedom #love #freedom

What if good institutions were in fact the product of good intentions? What if the cynicism that is supposed to be rigor and the acquisitiveness that is supposed to be realism are making us forget the origins of the greatness we lay claim to - power and wealth as secondary consequences of the progress of freedom, or, as Whitman would prefer, Democracy? ↗

— Marilynne Robinson

#freedom #institutions #freedom

If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them." [Freedom of the Park, Tribune, 7 December 1945] ↗

— George Orwell

#freedom #freedom-of-speech #liberty #minorities #persecution

Democracy: when artists lose patronage and are simply patronized. This is the case everywhere except America, where true art has never existed, and democracy has recently followed suit. ↗

— Benson Bruno

#art #democracy #funny #art

Because it was enough for one of those favorites of His Distinguished Highness to issue a thoughtless decree. These young smart alecks see it, and they immediately imagine some fatal result and come running to the rescue. They start trying to mend things, straighten things out, patch things up and untangle them. And so instead of using their energy to build their own vision of the future, instead of trying to put their irresponsible, destructive fantasies into action, our malcontents had to roll up their sleeves and start untangling what the minsters had knotted up. And there's always a lot of work to untangling! So they untangle and untangle, drenched in sweat, wearing their nerves to shreds, running around, patching things up here and there, and in all this rush and overwork, in this whirlwind, their fantasies slowly evaporate from their hot heads. ↗

— Ryszard Kapuściński

#imagination

We will not let terrorists change our way of life; we will not live in fear; and we will not undermine the civil liberties that characterize our Democracy. ↗

— Adam Schiff

#characterize #civil #civil liberties #democracy #fear

In a democracy, the most important office is the office of citizen ↗

— Louis Brandeis

#inspirational #politics #inspirational

I feel obligated to point out, though, that I have always been a sucker for ideas I find aesthetically pleasing. The cosmic sweep of the thing - an interstellar kula chain - affirming the differences and at the same time emphasizing the similarities of all the intelligent races in the galaxy - tying them together, building common traditions... The notion strikes me as kind of fine. ↗

— Roger Zelazny

#democracy #difference #globalization #ideas #inspirational