c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Every time I do an interview people ask similar questions, such as "What is the most significant story that you have revealed?" […] There really is only one overarching point that all of these stories have revealed, and that is–and I say this without the slightest bit of hyperbole or melodrama; it's not metaphorical and it's not figurative; it is literally true–that the goal of the NSA and it's five eyes partners in the English speaking world–Canada, New Zealand, Australia and especially the UK–is to eliminate privacy globally, to ensure that there could be no human communications that occur electronically, that evades their surveillance net; they want to make sure that all forms of human communications by telephone or by Internet, and all online activities are collected, monitored, stored and analyzed by that agency and by their allies.That means, to describe that is to describe a ubiquitous surveillance state; you don't need hyperbole to make that claim, and you do not need to believe me when I say that that's their goal. Document after document within the archive that Edward Snowden provided us declare that to be their goal. They are obsessed with searching out any small little premise of the planet where some form of communications might take place without they being able to invade it.
— Glenn Greenwald
To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness, and should insist upon choosing as their representatives only such persons as are good and true.
— Mahatma Gandhi
The US exports democracy, hence there being very little left for Americans
— Dean Cavanagh
As life speeds up & the political becomes ever more personal democracy continues to foster change as fast as the movement of tectonic plates
— Dean Cavanagh
Whether democracy or aristocracy is the better form of government constitutes a very difficult question. But, clearly, democracy inconveniences one person while aristocracy oppresses another. That is a truth which establishes itself and precludes any discussion: you are rich and I am poor.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Prosperity and democracy does seem to be a good way to wean a population off massive alcohol abuse.
— Oliver Bullough, The Last Man in Russia: The Struggle to Save a Dying Nation
កាលនិយាយពីប្រជាធិបតេយ្យ គឺ​និយាយ​ពី​ការ​ចូល​រួម។ កាលណានិយាយពីការចូលរួម គឺ​និយាយ​ដល់​គុណ​ភាពរបស់អ្នកចូលរួម""When it comes to democracy, its key element is participation. When it comes to participation, its key element is quality of the participants
— Khem Veasna ខឹម វាសនា
In 1870, came the victory of the short-service troops of Prussia over the long-service troops of France, where conscription had but recently been reintroduced in a partial form and as a supplementary measure. That obvious contrast carried more weight into the world than all the other factors which tilted the scales against France. As a result, universal peace-time conscription was adopted by almost all countries as the basis of their military system. This ensured that wars would grow bigger in scale, longer in duration, and worse in effects. While conscription appeared democratic, it provided autocrats, hereditary or revolutionary, with more effective and comprehensive means of imposing their will, both in peace and war. Once the rulp of compulsory service in arms was established for the young men of a nation, it was an obvious and easy transition to the servitude of the whole population. Totalitarian tyranny is the twin of total warfare—which might aptly be termed a reversion to tribal warfare on a larger scale.
— B.H. Liddell Hart, The Revolution in Warfare
The history of ancient Greece showed that, in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out—at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or other of the opposing sides. Democracy is a system which puts a brake on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace. No political system more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies, since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of emotional pressure.
— B.H. Liddell Hart, The Revolution in Warfare
You're a part of the order if you're not against it.
— Saleem Sharma
Universal peace-time conscription was adopted by almost all countries as the basis of their military system. This ensured that wars would grow bigger in scale, longer in duration, and worse in effects. While conscription appeared democratic, it provided autocrats, hereditary or revolutionary, with more effective and comprehensive means of imposing their will, both in peace and war. Once the rule of compulsory service in arms was established for the young men of a nation, it was an obvious and easy transition to the servitude of the whole population. Totalitarian tyranny is the twin of total warfare —which might aptly be termed a reversion to tribal warfare on a larger scale.
— B.H. Liddell Hart
As long as enough people can be frightened, then all people can be ruled. I am afraid that's how it works in a democracy.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Ending Syria's Occupation Of Lebanon: The U.S. Role
democracy is a see-saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion
— Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance
The protesters have called into question whether there is a real democracy. Real democracy is more than the right to vote once every two or four years. The choices have to be meaningful. But increasingly, and especially in the US, it seems that the political system is more akin to "one dollar one vote" than to "one person one vote". Rather than correcting the market failures, the political system was reinforcing them.
— Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality
For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence -- on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.
— John F. Kennedy
To hear these defenders of democracy talk, one would think that the people deliberate like a committee of wise men, whereas in truth judicial murders, foolhardy undertakings, wild choices, and above all foolish and disastrous wars are eminently the prerogatives of this form of government."Study on Sovereignty.
— Joseph de Maistre
There's not a branch of publishing or broadcasting that doesn't depend in some way on advertising. It'd be like an aquarium without water. Why, ninety-five percent of the information that reaches you has already been preselected and paid for.
— Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase
Sense isn’t democratic. An opinion uttered by 99 people does not necessarily make more sense than an opposing opinion that was uttered by one person.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Confessions of a Misfit
Democracy today, especially in the English-speaking world, is a political system that specialises in positioning inadequate, unqualified and dubious types in leadership positions.
— Gilad Atzmon, The Wandering Who? A Study of Jewish Identity Politics
We have really, that I know of, no philosophical basis for high and low. Moreover, the vegetable kingdom does not culminate, as the animal kingdom does. It is not a kingdom, but a common-wealth; a democracy, and therefore puzzling and unaccountable from the former point of view.
— Asa Gray, Letters of Asa Gray V2
You know you have a transparency problem when citizens of a democracy need to rely on WikiLeaks for details on changes to laws.
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
One only knows the sins of democracy against virtue when one is worthy enough to suffer from them.
— Raheel Farooq
Russell observes that "the merits of democracy are negative: it does not ensure good government, but it prevents certain evils," such as the evil of a small group of individuals achieving a secure monopoly on political power. The chief peril for the politician, Russell insists, is love of power. And politicians can easily yield to the love of power on the pretense that they are pursuing some absolute good.
— Bertrand Russell
Unlike exotic fruit or fancy cars, democracy is best if it is grown locally. It may take root in the common desire of the people who choose to adopt it, but it cannot be imposed from the outside.
— Anna Porter, The Ghosts of Europe: Central Europe's Past and Uncertain Future
Success of democracy lies within the analytical thought of a common man.
— M.H. Rakib
There is no democracy in physics. We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi.
— Luis Walter Alvarez
technologies come and go. Economic structures evolve and change. Society adjusts. But democratic basics persist in spite of the Tofflers, Gingrich and the chorus of corporate voices.(III - From Corporatism to Democracy)
— John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization
In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business.
— Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology
In the United States […] the two main business-dominated parties, with the support of the corporate community, have refused to reform laws that make it virtually impossible to create new political parties (that might appeal to non-business interests) and let them be effective. Although there is marked and frequently observed dissatisfaction with the Republicans and Democrats, electoral politics is one area where notions of competitions and free choice have little meaning. In some respects the caliber of debate and choice in neoliberal elections tends to be closer to that of the one-party communist state than that of a genuine democracy.
— Robert W. McChesney, Profit Over People: Neoliberalism and Global Order
...our children must learn...to face full responsibility for their actions, to make their own choices and cope with the results...the whole democratic system...depends upon it. For our system is founded on self-government, which is untenable if the individuals who make up the system are unable to govern themselves.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
As heirs to a legacy more than two centuries old, it is understandable why present-day Americans would take their own democracy for granted. A president freely chosen from a wide-open field of two men every four years; a Congress with a 99% incumbency rate; a Supreme Court comprised of nine politically appointed judges whose only oversight is the icy scythe of Death -- all these reveal a system fully capable of maintaining itself. But our perfect democracy, which neither needs nor particularly wants voters, is a rarity. It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them.
— Jon Stewart, America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction
We must hold to a rigid accountability those public servants who show unfaithfulness to the interests of the nation or inability to rise to the high level of the new demands upon our strength and our resources.
— Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life
Youths are the life blood of any nation.
— Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha
The true nature of a democracy is its ability to say yes when even the powerful say no
— Colum McCann, TransAtlantic
Sense isn’t democratic. A senseless opinion that’s advocated by 'the majority' is still senseless.
— Mokokoma Mokhonoana
I fear you do not fully comprehend the danger of abridging the liberties of the people. Nothing but the very sternest necessity can ever justify it. A government had better go to the very extreme of toleration, than to do aught that could be construed into an interference with, or to jeopardize in any degree, the common rights of its citizens.
— Abraham Lincoln
The real origin of the democratic spirit - and most likely, many democratic institutions - lies precisely in those spaces of improvisation just outside the control of governments and organized churches.
— David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
In a democracy, people always vote for their alike! Pig for the pig, raven for the raven! Dull for the dull, wise for the wise!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
There are many countries but few nations. We are committed to building Nigeria into a most desirable nation to live
— Fela Durotoye
We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens—like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It’s never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?
— David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
The many are more incorruptible than the few
—  they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.
What if freedom were the ability to make up our minds about what it was we wished to pursue, with whom we wished to pursue it, and what sort of commitments we wish to make to them in the process? Equality, then, would simply be a matter of guaranteeing equal access to those resources needed in the pursuit of an endless variety of forms of value. Democracy in that case would simply be our capacity to come together as reasonable human beings and work out the resulting common problems—since problems there will always be—a capacity that can only truly be realized once the bureaucracies of coercion that hold existing structures of power together collapse or fade away.
— David Graeber, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement
We do not get to vote on who owns what, or on relations in factory and so on, for all this is deemed beyond the sphere of the political, and it is illusory to expect that one can actually change things by "extending" democracy to ple's control. Radical changes in this domain should be made outside the sphere of legal "rights", etcetera: no matter how radical our anti-capitalism, unless this is understood, the solution sought will involve applying democratic mechanisms (which, of course, can have a positive role to play)- mechanisms, one should never forget, which are themselves part of the apparatus of the "bourgeois" state that guarantees the undisturbed functioning of capitalist reproduction. In this precise sense, Badiou hit the mark with his apparently wired claim that "Today, the enemy is not called Empire or Capital. It's called Democracy." it is the "democratic illusion" the acceptance of democratic procedures as the sole framework for any possible change, that blocks any radical transformation of capitalist relations.
— Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously
... drink levels all mankind. It is the ultimate democrat
— Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals
Had history been democratic in its ways, there would have been no farming and no industrial revolution. Both leaps into the future were occasioned by unbearably painful crises that made most people wish they could recoil into the past.
— Yanis Varoufakis, The Global Minotaur: America, the True Origins of the Financial Crisis and the Future of the World Economy
Time is the ultimate democracy. Rich and poor, young and old, male and female: all have 24 hours in a day and 7 days in a week.
— Elizabeth Grace Saunders, The 3 Secrets to Effective Time Investment: Achieve More Success with Less Stress: Foreword by Cal Newport, Author of So Good They Can't Ignore You
Our forefathers were not only brave. I believe they were right. I believe that what they meant was that every man born had equal right to grow from scratch by way of his own power unhindered to the highest expression of himself possible to him. This of course not antagonistic by sympathetic to the growth of all men as brothers. Free emulation not imitation of the "bravest and the best" is to be expected of him. Uncommon he may and will and should become as inspiration to his fellows, not a reflection upon them, not to be resented but accepted--and in this lies the only condition of the common man's survival. So only is he intrinsic to democracy.Persistently holding quality above quantity only as he attempts to live a superior life of his own, and to whatsoever degree in whatever case he finds it; this is his virtue in a democracy such as ours was designed to be.Only this sense of proportion affords tranquility of spirit, in itself beauty, in either character of action. Nature is never other than serene even in a thunderstorm. The assumption of the "firm countenance, lips compressed" in denial or resentment is not known to her as it is known to civilization. Such negation by human countenance may be moral (civilization is inclined to morality) but even so not nature. Again exuberance is repose but never excess.
— Frank Lloyd Wright, A Testament
Democracy suits Europeans today partly because it is associated with the triumph of capitalism and partly because it involves less commitment or intrusion into their lives than any of the alternatives. Europeans accept democracy because they no longer believe in politics. It is for this reason that we find both high levels of support for democracy in cross-national opinion polls and high rates of political apathy.
— Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century
America operates under the notion of equality before the law. Basic fairness is an article of faith. We may not agree on everything all of the time, but we select our leaders together. And when we don’t want them anymore, we get rid of them.
— Keith Ellison, My Country 'Tis of Thee
If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end, the destruction of communities. What is seen as an elaborate and difficult process of finding consensus is, in fact, a long process of making sure no one walks away feeling that their views have been totally ignored.
— David Graeber, Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology
We must face the ultimate contradiction that our free and democratic society was made possible by massive slave labor.
— David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World
Kenya DOES NOT belong to 2 tribes only. Kenya has 42 tribes. to say that the decision of 2 tribes is the decision of the whole country is fallacy and outright dictatorship and tribalismAkuku Mach Pep, Democracy on Trial
— Akuku Mach Pep
Democracy is a fine thing. But that doesn't mean citizens have a right to run riot whenever they disagree with something.#Page: 120
— Kazuo Ishiguro, An Artist of the Floating World
Change represents the real spirit of democracy and the real America.
— Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason
Democracy is a brawl settled in advance by counting heads.
— David P. Gontar
If at the end of the day the people of our city escape, it will be good.But if somehow our democracy remains standing - it will be even better.
— Boaz Yakin, Marathon
when your actions towards acquiring leadership in any country portrays blatant mischief orchestrated towards disregarding the concepts of the constitution, you do not only become guilty of hijacking power which rightfully belong to the people, but also, you are guilty of violation of the rights of freedom of the same people that you purport to want to lead. Like any match, elections is competition towards democracy, and all competitions have rules that set guidelines in that particular competition. Any violation of such rules renders that competition invalid. True democracy does not condone compromises. True democracy upholds and adheres to the rule of law, for it is the rule of law that can explicitly define democracy.
— Akuku Mach Pep
you call democracy freedom. I call it corporation.
— Jeffrey Fischer
the government bailed out the corporate sector. while the people thay supported the government financally, were ignored and left to fend for themselves. is this what you call democracy?
— Jeffrey Fischer
Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.
— Jacque Fresco
Democracy is like a tamborine - not everyone can be trusted with it.
— John Oliver
The point is that television does not reveal who the best man is. In fact, television makes impossible the determination of who is better than whom, if we mean by 'better' such things as more capable in negotiation, more imaginative in executive skill, more knowledgeable about international affairs, more understanding of the interrelations of economic systems, and so on. The reason has, almost entirely, to do with 'image.' But not because politicians are preoccupied with presenting themselves in the best possible light. After all, who isn't? It is a rare and deeply disturbed person who does not wish to project a favorable image. But television gives image a bad name. For on television the politician does not so much offer the audience an image of himself, as offer himself as an image of the audience. And therein lies one of the most powerful influences of the television commercial on political discourse.
— Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Voter apathy was, and will remain the greatest threat to democracy.
— Hazen Pingree
The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.
— Jacob Burckhardt, Judgments on History and Historians
He's the President—it's the responsibility of every citizen to criticize aggressively when they think it's warranted.
— Glenn Greenwald
Now I've been criticized for advocating that people push their boundaries because sometimes people get caught. Sometimes people get fired. Sometimes people lose their jobs because of pushing the boundaries too far, but it's an interesting experience. They found they didn't want to stay within those limitations that they were pushing. Once people find they can survive outside the limits, they're much happier. They don't want to feel trapped. So I think we can urge people to push the boundaries as far as they can, and if they get in trouble, fine; that's not too bad if that's what they want to do.
— Myles Horton, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change
It is really one of the most serious faults which can be found with the whole conception of democracy, that its cultural function must move on the basis of the common denominator. Such a point of view indeed would make a mess of all of the values which we have developed for examining works of art. It would address one end of education in that it would consider that culture which was available to everyone, but in that achievement it would eliminate culture itself.This is surely the death of all thought.This quote is taken from "The Artist’s Reality: Philosophies of Art" by Mark Rothko, written 1940-1 and published posthumously in 2004 by Yale University Press, pp.126-7.
— Mark Rothko
The human heart is the first home of democracy. It is where we embrace our questions. Can we be equitable? Can we be generous? Can we listen with our whole beings, not just our minds, and offer our attention rather than our opinions? And do we have enough resolve in our hearts to act courageously, relentlessly, without giving up--ever--trusting our fellow citizens to join with us in our determined pursuit of a living democracy?
— Terry Tempest Williams
Now I have very little respect for the electoral system in the United States. I could have respected it in the early days, when the country was small and we had small population. The system that we have in the United States was set up at a time when the total population was the population of Tennessee. We've stretched it to try to make it work for different kind of problems and in stretching and adapting it, we've lost its meaning. We still have the form but not the meaning. There's a lot of things that we have to look at critically that might have been useful at one time that are no longer useful I think there's some good in everything. There's some bad in everything. But there's so little good in some things that you know for practical purposes they're useless. They're beyond salvation. There's so much good in some things, even though there's bad, that we build on that.
— Myles Horton, We Make the Road by Walking: Conversations on Education and Social Change
...the majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former.
— Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Hart Benton
We hold there is no worse enemy to a state than he who keeps the law in his own hands.
— Edith Hamilton, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Because it was enough for one of those favorites of His Distinguished Highness to issue a thoughtless decree. These young smart alecks see it, and they immediately imagine some fatal result and come running to the rescue. They start trying to mend things, straighten things out, patch things up and untangle them. And so instead of using their energy to build their own vision of the future, instead of trying to put their irresponsible, destructive fantasies into action, our malcontents had to roll up their sleeves and start untangling what the minsters had knotted up. And there's always a lot of work to untangling! So they untangle and untangle, drenched in sweat, wearing their nerves to shreds, running around, patching things up here and there, and in all this rush and overwork, in this whirlwind, their fantasies slowly evaporate from their hot heads.
— Ryszard Kapuściński, The Emperor
Wouldn't it be more of a free country," persisted Francie "if we could ride in them free?" "No." "Why?" "Because that would be Socialism," concluded Johnny triumphantly, "and we don't want that over here." "Why?" "Because we got democracy and that's the best thing there is," clinched Johnny.
— Betty  Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
It does not require much historical knowledge (though it may require a certain historical perspective) to see that many, if not all, of the "aristocratic" elements of the Constitution (as in other countries) have gradually disappeared or were washed away during the past two hundred years, while the monarchic powers of the presidency and the democratic extent of majority rule became more and more overwhelming.
— John Lukacs, Democracy and Populism: Fear and Hatred
For a quarter-century British governments had tried and failed to combine economic growth, increased social service provision and a high level of employment. The second depended ultimately on the first, but when difficulty arose, the first had always been sacrificed to the other two. The United Kingdom was, after all, a democracy whose votes, greedy and gullible, had to be placated.
— J.M. Roberts, The New Penguin History of The World
The PM glanced a look of pure malevolence. A terrifying glimpse into what madness, ego and naked ambition it takes to lead a modern democracy.
— Alan Dean, Spaceship Over Vancouver
Is it possible thatwe ‘hate’ politics because we have forgotten its specifi c and limitednature, its overwhelming value, and also its innate fragility? Could it bethat our expectations are so high that politics appears almost destinedto disappoint? Democratic politics cannot make ‘every sad heart glad’,as Crick argued, nor did it ever promise to do so. But not alwaysgetting what you want, an awareness that public governance is oftenslow and bureaucratic, a frustration that some decisions are hard tounderstand or have to be made in secret, disbelief and anger at the selfinterestedbehaviour of a small number of politicians, and an acceptancethat some people will always take out more from the system thanthey put in—these are the prices you pay for living in a democracy.
— Matthew Flinders, Defending Politics: Why Democracy Matters in the Twenty-First Century
Is it possible that we ‘hate’ politics because we have forgotten its specific and limited nature, its overwhelming value, and also its innate fragility? Could it be that our expectations are so high that politics appears almost destined to disappoint? Democratic politics cannot make ‘every sad heart glad’, as Crick argued, nor did it ever promise to do so. But not always getting what you want, an awareness that public governance is often slow and bureaucratic, a frustration that some decisions are hard to understand or have to be made in secret, disbelief and anger at the selfinterested behaviour of a small number of politicians, and an acceptance that some people will always take out more from the system than they put in—these are the prices you pay for living in a democracy.
— Matthew Flinders, Defending Politics: Why Democracy Matters in the Twenty-First Century
Political cynicism, disengagement, democratic decadence — call it what you will — is too often an excuse for physical and intellectual laziness.
— Matthew Flinders, Defending Politics: Why Democracy Matters in the Twenty-First Century
When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.
— Mark Twain
Mrs. Cole was a perfect democrat. She hated all kids equally.
— Stephen King, It
A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.
— Noah Webster, The Original Blue Back Speller
Vote? What's so fun about voting? You should never vote, everyone knows that. If you vote and your guy wins you can't later complain because you helped put him there. That's why I never vote, so I can later complain.
— Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity
But democrats are seldom welcome on planets run by totalitarian governments, and scarcely more welcome on planets where anarchy prevails--this is due to the very nature of democracy, the only practical compromise between totalitarianism and anarchy.
— Christopher Stasheff, The Warlock in Spite of Himself
Freedom, democracy, and socialism can only ever exist together; it is impossible to have any one without the other two.
— Michelle Templet
By creating a society in which all people, of all colors, were granted freedom and citizenship, the Haitian Revolution forever transformed the world. It was a central part of the destruction of slavery in the Americas, and therefore a crucial moment in the history of democracy, one that laid the foundation for the continuing struggles for human rights everywhere. In this sense we are all descendents of the Haitain Revolution, and responsible to these ancestors.
— Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution
Democracy in America was never the same as Liberty in Europe. In Europe Liberty was a great life-throb. But in America Democracy was always something anti-life. The greatest democrats, like Abraham Lincoln, had always a sacrificial, self-murdering note in their voices. American Democracy was a form of self-murder, always. Or of murdering somebody else... The love, the democracy, the floundering into lust, is a sort of by-play. The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.
— D.H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature
[The Internet] affects democracy... As more and more citizens express what they think, and defend it in writing, that will change the way people understand public issues. It is easy to be wrong and misguided in your head. It is harder when the product of your mind can be criticized by others. Of course, it is a rare human who admits that he has been persuaded that he is wrong. But it is even rarer for a human to ignore when he has been proven wrong. The writing of ideas, arguments, and criticism improves democracy.
— Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity
The more degrees of freedom there are in practice, the wider the discussion and debate can be.
— Thomas Newkirk, Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones: Six Literacy Principles Worth Fighting for
Multilate. Ha Ha Ha,' said Nusswan, avuncular and willing to pretend it was a clever joke. 'Its all relative. At the best of times, democracy is a see saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion. You see, to make a democratic omelette you have to break a few democratic eggs. To fight fascism and other evil forces threatening our country, there is nothing wrong in taking strong measures. Especially when the foreign hand is always interfering to destabilize us. Did you know the CIA is trying to sabotage the Family Planning Programme?
— Rohinton Mistry
Love of democracy can be likened to a mother's love for her son.It must be cherished,nurtured and protected for all of time
— J.R. Ortiz, American Amaranth
It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.
— Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems
Hating people because of their color is wrong. And it doesn't matter which color does the hating. It's just plain wrong.
— Muhammad Ali
Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
Our true nationality is mankind.
— H.G. Wells
No human race is superior
—  no religious faith is inferior. All collective judgments are wrong. Only racists make them
I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better.
— Thurgood Marshall
Race doesn't really exist for you because it has never been a barrier. Black folks don't have that choice.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.
— Malcolm X
...racist thought and action says far more about the person they come from than the person they are directed at.
— Chris Crutcher, Whale Talk
We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity.
— Fred Hampton
The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.
— V.S. Naipaul, A Bend in the River
Racism does not have a good track record. It's been tried out for a long time and you'd think by now we'd want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management. 
— Thomas Sowell
Motherfuckers will read a book that’s one third Elvish, but put two sentences in Spanish and they [white people] think we’re taking over.
— Junot Díaz
When I'm born I'm black, when I grow up I'm black, when I'm in the sun I'm black, when I'm sick I'm black, when I die I'm black, and you... when you're born you're pink, when you grow up you're white, when you're cold you're blue, when you're sick you're blue, when you die you're green and you dare call me colored
— Oglala Lakota
The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.
— Frederick Douglass
Racism is not merely a simplistic hatred. It is, more often, broad sympathy toward some and broader skepticism toward others...
— Ta-Nehisi Coates
Concerning non-violence: it is criminal to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the constant victim of brutal attacks.
— Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements
The genius of the current caste system, and what most distinguishes it from its predecessors, is that it appears voluntary. People choose to commit crimes, and that's why they are locked up or locked out, we are told. This feature makes the politics of responsibility particularly tempting, as it appears the system can be avoided with good behavior. But herein lies the trap. All people make mistakes. All of us are sinners. All of us are criminals. All of us violate the law at some point in our lives. In fact, if the worst thing you have ever done is speed ten miles over the speed limit on the freeway, you have put yourself and others at more risk of harm than someone smoking marijuana in the privacy of his or her living room. Yet there are people in the United States serving life sentences for first-time drug offenses, something virtually unheard of anywhere else in the world.
— Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
The growing number of gated communities in our nation is but one example of the obsession with safety. With guards at the gate, individuals still have bars and elaborate internal security systems. Americans spend more than thirty billion dollars a year on security. When I have stayed with friends in these communities and inquired as to whether all the security is in response to an actual danger I am told “not really," that it is the fear of threat rather than a real threat that is the catalyst for an obsession with safety that borders on madness.Culturally we bear witness to this madness every day. We can all tell endless stories of how it makes itself known in everyday life. For example, an adult white male answers the door when a young Asian male rings the bell. We live in a culture where without responding to any gesture of aggression or hostility on the part of the stranger, who is simply lost and trying to find the correct address, the white male shoots him, believing he is protecting his life and his property. This is an everyday example of madness. The person who is really the threat here is the home owner who has been so well socialized by the thinking of white supremacy, of capitalism, of patriarchy that he can no longer respond rationally.White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. Mass media then brings us the news of this in a newspeak manner that sounds almost jocular and celebratory, as though no tragedy has happened, as though the sacrifice of a young life was necessary to uphold property values and white patriarchal honor. Viewers are encouraged feel sympathy for the white male home owner who made a mistake. The fact that this mistake led to the violent death of an innocent young man does not register; the narrative is worded in a manner that encourages viewers to identify with the one who made the mistake by doing what we are led to feel we might all do to “protect our property at all costs from any sense of perceived threat. " This is what the worship of death looks like.
— bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions
I want to yell so loud that Baby Girl can hear me that dirty ain't a color, disease ain't the Negro side a town. I want to stop that moment from coming - and it come in ever white child's life - when they start to think that colored folks ain't as good as whites. ... I pray that wasn't her moment, Pray I still got time.
— Kathryn Stockett
Today I'm on tell you bout a man from outer space." She just loves hearing about peoples from outer space. Her favorite show on the tee-vee is My Favorite Martian, I pull on my antennae hats I shaped last night out a tin foil, fasten em on our heads. One for her and one for me. We look like we a couple a crazy people in them things."One day, a wise Martian come down to Earth to teach us people a thing or two," I say."Martian? How big?""oh, he about six-two.""What's his name?""Martian Luther King."She take a deep breath and lean her head down on my shoulder. I feel her three-year-old heart racing against mine, flapping like butterflies on my white uniform."He was a real nice Martian, Mister King. Looked just like us, nose, mouth, hair up on his head, but sometime people looked at him funny and sometime, well, I guess sometime people was just downright mean."I coul get in a lot a trouble telling her these little stories, especially with Mister Leefolt. But Mae Mobley know these our "secret stories"."Why Aibee? Why was they so mean to him?" she ask."Cause he was green.
— Kathryn Stockett, The Help
Forty-two years after Dr. King was murdered, we are still a nation of inequality. People of color, women, gays, lesbians, and others are still treated as second-class citizens. Yes, things have changed but we have still not achieved equality among all humans. And nonhuman animals continue to be chattel property without any inherent value.
— Gary L. Francione
Crooks stood up from his bunk and faced her. "I had enough," he said coldly. "You got no rights comin' in a colored man's room. You got no rights messing around in here at all. Now you jus' get out, an' get out quick. If you don't, I'm gonna ast the boss not to ever let you come in the barn no more."She turned on him in scorn. "Listen, Nigger," she said. "You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?"Crooks stared helplessly at her, and then he sat down on his bunk and drew into himself.She closed on him. "You know what I could do?"Crooks seemed to grow smaller, and he pressed himself against the wall. "Yes, ma'am.""Well, you keep your place then, Nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain't even funny."Crooks had reduced himself to nothing. There was no personality, no ego--nothing to arouse either like or dislike. He said, "Yes, ma'am," and his voice was toneless.For a moment she stood over him as though waiting for him to move so that she could whip at him again; but Crooks sat perfectly still, his eyes averted, everything that might be hurt drawn in. She turned at last to the other two.
— John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men
Whoever debases others is debasing himself.
— James     Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
— Lydia Maria Francis Child
Most middle-class whites have no idea what it feels like to be subjected to police who are routinely suspicious, rude, belligerent, and brutal.
— Benjamin Spock
The one thing that the racist can never manage is anything like discrimination: he is indiscriminate by definition.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
There's such a big difference between being dead and alive, I told myself, the greatest gift that anyone can give anyone else is life. And the greatest sin a person can do to another is to take away that life. Next to that, all the rules and religions in the world are secondary; mere words and beliefs that people choose to believe and kill and hate by. My life won't be lived that way, and neither, I hope, will my children's.
— James McBride, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother
What age is a black boy when he learns he's scary?
— Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude
To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.
— Peter Singer, Practical Ethics
It was obvious that bigotry was never a one-way operation, that hatred bred hatred!
— Isaac Asimov, Pebble in the Sky
A vision of cultural homogeneity that seeks to deflect attention away from or even excuse the oppressive, dehumanizing impact of white supremacy on the lives of black people by suggesting black people are racist too indicates that the culture remains ignorant of what racism really is and how it works. It shows that people are in denial. Why is it so difficult for many white folks to understand that racism is oppressive not because white folks have prejudicial feelings about blacks (they could have such feelings and leave us alone) but because it is a system that promotes domination and subjugation?
— bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism
We go on in her room, where we like to set. I get up in the big chair and she get up on me and smile, bounce a little. "Tell me bout the brown wrapping. And the present." She so excited, she squirming. She has to jump off my lap, squirm a little to get it out. Then she crawl back up. That's her favorite story cause when I tell it, she get two presents. I take the brown wrapping from my Piggly Wiggly grocery bag and wrap up a little something, like piece a candy, inside. Then I use the white paper from my Cole's Drug Store bag and wrap another one just like it. She take it real serious, the unwrapping, letting me tell the story bout how it ain't the color a the wrapping that count, it's what we is inside.
— Kathryn Stockett, The Help
The world does not need white people to civilize others. The real White People's Burden is to civilize ourselves.
— Robert Jensen, The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism, and White Privilege
Despite what some people have said, President Bush did not want black people to die in New Orleans. However, he did hope they would not relocate to any areas of Texas that he likes to frequent.
— Scott McClellan, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception
Sexual distortions carry strong undertones of prejudice—sexism, racism and homophobia—that rob individuals of their individuality. Common stereotypes include “men are all dogs,” “women are less interested in sex,” “gays are promiscuous,” certain races are frigid or hung, and certain sex acts are indulgent, effeminate, or immoral. Other distortions clearly function as tools of organizations or of religious or political figures to shape public opinion through dogma and to control their followers’ lives.
— Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist.
— Auliq Ice
Those white things have taken all I had or dreamed," she said, "and broke my heartstrings too. There is no bad luck in the world but whitefolks.
— Toni Morrison, Beloved
Richard exhaled. It was like somebody sprinkling pepper on his wound: Thousands of Biafrans were dead, and this man wanted to know if there was anything new about one dead white man. Richard would write about this, the rule of Western journalism: One hundred dead black people equal to one dead white person.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
Our love of lockstep is our greatest curse, the source of all that bedevils us. It is the source of homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, terrorism, bigotry of every variety and hue, because it tells us there is one right way to do things, to look, to behave, to feel, when the only right way is to feel your heart hammering inside you and to listen to what its timpani is saying.
— Anna Quindlen