Quotes about Democracy

High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Our waking life's desire to shape the world to our convenience invites all manner of paradox and difficulty. All in our custody seethes with an inner restlessness. But in dreams we stand in this great democracy of the possible and there we are right pilgrims indeed. There we go forth to meet what we shall meet.

I count it a mistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read print is allowed to believe that he can read all that is printed. I count it a misfortune that serious books are exposed in the public market, like slaves exposed naked for sale. But there we are, since we live in an age of mistaken democracy, we must go through with it.

TO FOREIGN LANDS. I heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what you wanted.

Whoever degrades another degrades me, And whatever is done or said returns at last to me. Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the current and index. I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy, By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their counterpart of on the same terms.

We still (sometimes) remember that we cannot be free if our minds and voices are controlled by someone else. But we have neglected to understand that we cannot be free if our food and its sources are controlled by someone else. The condition of the passive consumer of food is not a democratic condition. One reason to eat responsibly is to live free. (pg. 323, The Pleasures of Eating)

Make no mistake, here in our time, it's more important than ever that we show up to vote, not just this year, but every year and in every election. Every voice must be heard and every vote must be counted.

The right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished.

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences.

Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.

The working men are the basis of all governments, for the plain reason that they are the most numerous.

As citizens of the United States, we are stewards of this magnificent thing called democracy.