Charles Edison Quotes

We as citizens should hold our government accountable for word and deed.

The fundamentalist call has resonance because it invited men to participate… in contrast to a political culture that reduces citizens to spectators and asked them to leave things to their rulers.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

I believe in defending democracy by preserving democracy, not by descending to the use of the same weapons used in dictatorships, whether of the Nazi or Communist stripe.

Democracy should be practiced not every six years, but every day.

Good citizenship and defending democracy means living up to the ideals and values that make this country great.

A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

In the 2004 presidential election, we saw a wonderful example of citizens making contributions. In fact, individual giving to both the Kerry and Bush campaigns was the highest in our nation's history.

Crucially, I'd like to thank Labour party members up and down the country for sticking with us. For their active citizenship, their willingness to engage in our democracy, and for being there at the cutting edge of making our democracy work.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Anyone who wants to be part of the political process should adopt values that are compatible with democracy.

Democracy - or any improvement on it - will rest on the layman's right to criticize. His criticism will be often - very often - damn silly, but if, like Plato and the Fascists, we take away his right to criticize, we take away his right to appreciate.

I think we have very steady records of President Putin, who inherited the country with democratic values.

The value of government to the people it serves is in direct relationship to the interest citizens themselves display in the affairs of state.

Any political party that includes the word 'democratic' in its name, isn't.

Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government, which sooner or later becomes autocratic government.

If you create a system that makes the small donors the linchpin of the system in terms of how members of Congress directly raise the funds for their campaigns, then it gives everyday citizens much more of a role - a leveraging role - in the funding of those campaigns.

A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.

When women are pessimistic about their political strength and feel hopeless about changing the conditions of their lives, it is almost as if they do not believe that democracy means the country belongs to them. But it's true.

Logically, in a society ostensibly grounded on representative government, it would seem reasonable that a majority of the people in a State would elect a majority of that State’s legislators.

This is probably my last free statement through our news media, where the radio and television are already under the heel of the ruling political party of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. One would have thought radio and television were enough as propaganda tools.

People don't understand democracy here. They think it simply means disobedience to the authorities.

The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens.

The present trend toward Government secrecy could end in a dictatorship. The more information there is made available, the greater will be the nation’s security.