Ilana Mercer Quotes

America's founders knew the importance of allowing the people to speak critically about government actions.

The Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and elsewhere, and should not be demonized or condemned for disagreeing with them. Suggesting that to challenge and criticize policy is undermining and hurting our troops is not democratic, nor what this country has stood for over 200 years.

The right to dissent is the only thing that makes life tolerable for a judge of an appellate court... the affairs of government could not be conducted by democratic standards without it.

If there is liberty, if there is democracy, in this country, it will stand or fall with the right of the minority to express to the full force of language its opposition in public to the policies of the government. And it will stand or fall with the courage of the minority so to express itself.

I am not an American who believes that questioning or criticizing my government is unpatriotic.

The people have every right to meet in a peaceful manner and express and ventilate their grievance and criticize the policy and actions of any civilized Government.

Joe and I are still very aware of the fact that we live in a country where he criticised the government and lived another day. That trumps all. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the other forms of government. You constantly have to fight for it; you have to keep your government honest.

I honestly feel that if there is an important point of view, any member of the Congress party, any member of my Cabinet is free to raise issues and require reconsideration of issues. I think that's what a democracy is about.

To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.

This is what democracy is all about. People have every right to protest whoever's in the White House, without fear of persecution. If this happened in Iran, people would be shot on the streets. This is the United States of America, and we have a First Amendment that protects this kind of speech.

I fear for the democratic system. And I fear for our liberties. Only a small group of people fights for our liberties. Once we start on the slippery slope and those people are put in jeopardy, then we're really in trouble.

To totalitarianism, an opponent is by definition subversive; democracy treats subversives as mere opponents for fear of betraying its principles.

Democracy's my idea. I do not agree with communists, my acts prove. Free press in Cuba - free ideas, freedom religion belief.

In a democracy, everyone has the right to criticise the Government.

One of the main purposes of laws in a democratic society is to put burdens upon intelligence and reduce it to impotence. Ostensibly, their aim is to penalize anti-social acts; actually their aim is to penalize heretical opinions. At least ninety-five Americans out of every 100 believe that this process is honest and even laudable; it is practically impossible to convince them that there is anything evil in it. In other words, they cannot grasp the concept of liberty.

In a democracy, everyone has the right to criticise the Government. Normally, the opposition gets more media space and even the people find it interesting to listen to voices against the government of the day. Ever since I took office, my friends in the opposition have been levelling baseless allegations about my foreign trips. Had these trips been a failure, then they would have based their comments on specific issues. When opponents keep harping on one point, it is a sure sign of success!

Ours is the "land of the free"-nobody denies that-nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.)

The strength of this country lies in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights and the freedom of speech and thought.

LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY! True anyhow no matter how many Liars use those words.

Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.

We are Americans, We have the right to participate and debate any administration.

I think that our politics everywhere are gonna be going through this bumpy phase. But as long as we stay true to our Democratic principles, as long as elections have integrity, as long as we respect freedom of speech, freedom of religion, as long as there are checks and balances in our governments so that the people have the ability to not just make judgments about how well government is serving them but also change governments if they're not serving them well, then I have confidence that over the long term, progress will continue.

We're nowhere near democracy. I've been released, that's all.

The values that we talked about, the values democracy and free speech and international norms and rule of law, respecting the ability of other countries to determine their own destiny and preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Things are not something that we can set aside.

I think what it was about was the people's right to vote and have those votes counted. And if you think back through our history, an awful lot of what we've fought over, struggled for, is the right of people to vote. That's what the civil-rights movement was, at its bottom, about. At the fundamental level, democracy means a government in which the people vote.