#democracy

Kami antarsaudara terpaksa saling bunuh hanya karena kekuasaan. Itulah yang nyaris terjadi di setiap negara. Demokrasi yang sekarang menggejala, apakah benar akan mengantarkan manusia pada kesadaran untuk berhenti saling membunuh? Tidak juga. Di negeri seberang, di mana kudengar demokrasi diberikan begitu leluasa, malah kejahatan, pembunuhan, pemerkosaan terhadap perempuan, saling fitnah, saling rebut kekuasaan hampir terjadi setiap hari. ↗

— Putu Fajar Arcana

#inspirational #politics #inspirational

From the end of the World War twenty-one years ago, this country, like many others, went through a phase of having large groups of people carried away by some emotion--some alluring, attractive, even speciously inspiring, public presentation of a nostrum, a cure-all. Many Americans lost their heads because several plausible fellows lost theirs in expounding schemes to end barbarity, to give weekly handouts to people, to give everybody a better job--or, more modestly, for example, to put a chicken or two in every pot--all by adoption of some new financial plan or some new social system. And all of them burst like bubbles. Some proponents of nostrums were honest and sincere, others--too many of them--were seekers of personal power; still others saw a chance to get rich on the dimes and quarters of the poorer people in our population. All of them, perhaps unconsciously, were capitalizing on the fact that the democratic form of Government works slowly. There always exists in a democratic society a large group which, quite naturally, champs at the bit over the slowness of democracy; and that is why it is right for us who believe in democracy to keep the democratic processes progressive--in other words, moving forward with the advances in civilization. That is why it is dangerous for democracy to stop moving forward because any period of stagnation increases the numbers of those who demand action and action now. ↗

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

#depression #emotion #government #politics #progressiveness

It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that 'history' had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#britain #british-empire #cold-war #conservative-party-uk #crisis

Democracy, good governance and modernity cannot be imported or imposed from outside a country. ↗

— Emile Lahud

#country #democracy #good #good governance #governance

China has to go along with world trends. That's democracy, liberty, individual freedom. China sooner or later has to go that way. It cannot go backward. ↗

— Dalai Lama

#backward #cannot #china #democracy #freedom

In order to build basic democracy here we'll need lives of two generations - at least forty years. ↗

— Aleksandr Lebed

#build #democracy #forty #forty years #generations

The last two elections were stolen. They were stolen and so we will not rest until we reclaim our democracy and this is what today is all about. ↗

— Barbara Lee

#democracy #elections #last #our #reclaim

The transition from tyranny to democracy is very hard. The Syrian people have to handle this in a way that works in Syria. And the brutality of the Assad regime is unacceptable. ↗

— Jacob Lew

#democracy #handle #hard #people #regime

Class struggle: external peace, international solidarity, peace among peoples. This is the sacred slogan of international socialist democracy that liberates nations. ↗

— Karl Liebknecht

#class #class struggle #democracy #external #international

Democracy is hypocrisy without limitation. ↗

— Iskander Mirza

#hypocrisy #limitation #without