#racy

Democracy is made up of three elements. One is whether the laws support pluralistic principles. The second is whether the people take advantage of these laws. The third element is whether the peoples' wallets are thick enough to benefit from this democracy. ↗

— Lech Walesa

#benefit #democracy #element #elements #enough

We see the tendency in the world to criticise democracy and sometimes even to say that authoritarian countries like China are more efficient. That is very short-sighted. China looks efficient only because it can sacrifice most people's rights. This is not something the west should be happy about. ↗

— Ai Weiwei

#authoritarian #be happy #because #china #countries

And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction. ↗

— Robert Welch

#distinction #hundred #knew #made #meant

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy. ↗

— Paul Wellstone

#come #democracy #hypocrisy #idea #imperatives

Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities. ↗

— Paul Wellstone

#democracy #development #education #fullest #goal

As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level. ↗

— Paul Wellstone

#citizens #community #democracy #free #free citizens

Nothing about it interested me. Or about anything else, except making up stories. If literacy weren't so nearly universal, God knows what I'd be. A drain on the State, I shouldn't wonder. ↗

— Donald E. Westlake

#anything #drain #else #except #god

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy. ↗

— Paul Wellstone

#balance of power #between #democracy #elites #imbalance

A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.  Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which I may be eligible after the destruction of my body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen. ↗

— Roger Zelazny

#agnosticism #bureaucracy #funny #humor #mythology

I really wish there was some big brother conspiracy theory. I just think it's the ignorance of trying to make a dollar. That's what the networks have done and will continue to do. If anyone doesn't think that this is about making money, then they're crazy. ↗

— Montel Williams

#anyone #big #big brother #brother #conspiracy