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Democracy
Quotes Page
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The lesson
of history is clear: democracy always wins in the end.
-- Marjorie
Kelly *
if we wish to accomplish in the next 15 years what we failed to accomplish in
the last 15, we would do well to focus on democratizing structures of power. That
means imagining, and then creating, economic democracy.
-- Marjorie
Kelly | Democracy
is about two things. First, it is about purpose. In the political realm, it's
about an overriding concern for the common good. In the economic realm, it's about
having the common good trump the narrow self-interest of the financial elite.
It's about broadening corporate purpose from serving shareholders to serving stakeholders,
and releasing executives from the destructive mandate to maximize shareholder
gain at any cost. Second, democracy is about structures that bring this purpose
to life. It's not about separating good corporations from bad, but about shaping
the system forces that act on all corporations. It's about consciously crafting
new democratic system structures, structures of voice, structures of decision
making, structures of conflict resolution, structures of accountability.
--
Marjorie Kelly We
are experiencing a unique convergence of forces, not only the forces of scandal,
but the forces of change. We can use this moment to take corporate social responsibility
to the next level, the level of economic democracy. We can become a new founding
generation, completing the design in the economic realm that our forefathers began
in the political realm. Instead of chasing one form of corporate wrongdoing at
a time, we can put in place enduring structures of justice, effective structures
of checks and balances. For it is only in this way that we can truly safeguard
the common good, not only for today, but for generation after generation to come.
-- Marjorie
Kelly
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*
"The vision I see is not only a movement of direct democracy, of self- and co-determination
and non-violence, but a movement in which politics means the power to love and
the power to feel united on the spaceship Earth... In a world struggling in violence
and dishonesty, the further development of non-violence - not only as a philosophy
but as a way of life, as a force on the streets, in the market squares, outside
the missile bases, inside the chemical plants and inside the war industry - becomes
one of the most urgent priorities."
-- Petra
Kelly | 
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We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign
ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid
to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation
that is afraid of its people.
-- John
F. Kennedy Our
labor unions are not narrow, self-seeking groups. They have raised wages, shortened
hours, and provided supplemental benefits. Through collective bargaining and grievance
procedures, they have brought justice and democracy to the shop floor.
--
John F. Kennedy |
"America
now stands as the world's foremost power. We should be proud: Not since the age
of the Romans have one people achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans;
we do not seek an empire. We are Americans, trustees of a vision and a heritage
that commit us to the values of democracy and the universal cause of human rights."
-- Senator John Kerry
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*
"Democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as
the only road to sustained economic development and social justice."
-- Kim Dae-jung |
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| *
the anti-war movement should turn itself into a pro-democracy movement
--
Naomi Klein
|  |
Students
should not only be trained to live in a democracy when they grow up; they should
have the chance to live in one today.
-- Alfie Kohn
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The proper goal of an economic
democracy agenda is to replace the global suicide economy ruled by rapacious and
unaccountable global corporations with a planetary system of local living economies
comprised of human-scale enterprise rooted in the communities they serve and locally
owned by the people whose wellbeing depends on them.
-- David
Korten |
| *
"The ideas and principles of democracy should not be limited to politics,
but must pervade all areas of social life."
-- Bruno
Kreisky |  |
| |
We, as citizens or members
of people's organisations, can preserve and nourish basic principles needed for
long-term efforts aimed at transforming a totalitarian and war-torn society into
a democratic one."
-- Katarina
Kruhonja |
 |
*
freedom rings resoundingly
in a democracy each time we speak freely.
-- Dennis
Kucinich |
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Some believe that the only way to remove the authoritarian regime and replace
it with a democratic one is through violent means. I would like to set the precedent
of political change through political settlement, not through violence.
--
Aung San Suu Kyi |
 | *
"No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry... If some
go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of
hunger belies the existence of democracy."
--
Frances Moore Lappe
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*
We’ve come a long way, but we still have a distance to go before all of our citizens
embrace the idea of a truly interracial democracy, what I like to call the Beloved
Community, a nation at peace with itself.
-- John
R. Lewis |
 |
*
“We want harmonious development, ... We should work together for more democratic
and law-based international relations, and a harmonious environment in which countries
respect one another, treat one another as equals, and different cultures can emulate
and interchange with each other.”
-- Li
Zhaoxing |
|
*
“Democracy
is the government of the people, by the people, for the people”
-- Abraham
Lincoln |  |
 |
*
Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly,
without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution,
becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the
active element.
-- Rosa
Luxemburg |
"Democracy is
never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing."
-- Archibald MacLeish, American poet, public official (1892-1982)
"I have tremendous
confidence in the capacity of the poor to transform not only their own lives but
also to build a just, humane, and democratic society."
-- Ruth
Manorama |  |
 |
*
"Democracy is the most demanding of all forms of government in terms of the energy,
imagination, and public spirit required of the individual."
-- George
C. Marshall (1880-1959) | "America:
Socializing the risks, Privatizing the profits, Putting business in the democracy,
Taking the democracy out of the business."
-- Christopher Masterjohn
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| *
Ensuring the access of all citizens to government information and to essential
information for human development is a must for every democratic society.
-- Koïchiro Matsuura,
UNESCO Director-General
| Dictatorships
are one-way streets. Democracy boasts twox-way traffic.
-- Albert Moravia
| 
| *
We must construct a
new set of values and attitudes to replace the culture of war which, for centuries,
has been influencing the course of civilization. Winning peace means the triumph
of our pledge to establish, on a democratic basis, a new social framework of tolerance
and generosity from which no one will feel excluded.
-- Federico
Mayor |
*
"One cannot have a trade
union or a democratic election without freedom of speech, freedom of association
and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby people choose and remove
their rulers, there is no method of securing human rights against the state. No
democracy without human rights, no human rights without democracy, and no trade
union rights without either. That is our belief; that is our creed."
-- George
Meany |  |
| *
"Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness
cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy,
democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures
and peoples."
-- Rigoberta
Menchu |  |
 | I
don't accept armed struggle. Maybe it was the way in the '50s and '60s, but we
want a democratic revolution...
-- Evo
Morales |
 |
You
can't have a people's democracy as long as corporations
are considered people. -- Bill
Moyers
*
The quality of democracy and the quality of journalism
are deeply entwined. -- Bill
Moyers
“I
believe democracy requires a ‘sacred contract’ between
journalists and those who put their trust in us to
tell them what we can about how the world really works.”
-- Bill
Moyers
|
The Interfaith Alliance
has to become an ongoing sustaining and powerful movement whose interest is to
prove that religion has a healing side as well as a killing side, and that democracy
is the consequence of conscience
-- Bill
Moyers An
unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only partisan information
and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind
and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less inclined to put up a fight,
ask questions and be skeptical. And just as a democracy can die of too many lies,
that kind of orthodoxy can kill us, too.
-- Bill
Moyers "Neither
democracy nor effective representation is possible until each participant in the
group...devotes a measurable part of his life to furthering its existence."
-- Lewis Mumford, American social philosopher (1895-1990)
| *
The survival of democracy depends on the renunciation of violence and the development
of nonviolent means to combat evil and advance the good.
-- A.
J. Muste |  |
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