#racy

People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway. ↗

— Simeon Strunsky

#buses #democracy #less #library #more

I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory. ↗

— Norman Mailer

#fascism #nature

A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives. ↗

— Charles Wheelan

#economics #free-market #markets #science

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy? ↗

— Mahatma Gandhi

#fascism #liberty #loss #politics #society

One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time. ↗

— Carl Sagan

#literacy #reading #person

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all. ↗

— Adam Smith

#democracy #freedom #history #hope #individualism

The time to make up your mind about people, is never. ↗

— Philip Barry

#tracy-lord #acting

A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#democracy #elections #voters #character

If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads. ↗

— François Mauriac

#literacy #reading #heart

The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read. ↗