Jon Stewart Quotes

In America you elect the electoral college and they select the President. In Russia, the people select the President directly. This is more democratic.

Sure the people are stupid: the human race is stupid. Sure Congress is an inefficient instrument of government. But the people are not stupid enough to abandon representative government for any other kind, including government by the guy who knows.

Democracy, in brief, requires government by parties because the citizens are too numerous, too ill-informed and too preoccupied to come together spontaneously to choose the policies and leaders they wish to prevail. Political machinery has to be worked. The parties work it.

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..

A simple democracy is the devil's own government.

Democracy is a very bad form of government ... but all the others are so much worse.

Democracy is not a Beloved Republic really, and never will be. But it is less hateful than other contemporary forms of government, and to that extent deserves our support.

As far as domestic democracy, all here present know that democracy means government of the people by the people. While we agree that consultation and participation are essential to every democracy, this is seldom achieved in practice.

We should not be surprised that democracy is imperfect even in Western countries.

The view that we hold in Iraq now is this - that democracy is associated with elections. I believe that elections are possible.

There are three species of government: republican, monarchical, and despotic.

Voting should be the right of the great body of the society…an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

Democracy can be defined in many different ways. This is one reason why there have existed so many varieties of -democratic- states in the world

Democracy is an interesting, even laudable, notion and there is no question but that when compared to Communism, which is too dull, or Fascism, which is too exciting, it emerges as the most palatable form of government.

One-man-one-vote is a most difficult form of government.. Results can be erratic.

Many Americans do not realize that we could institute proportional representation for most elections in the U.S. without amending the Constitution. In helping to educate the public about the potential for voting system reform, CVD can play a central role in a pro-democracy movement right here in America!

A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.

We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I can tell you quite honestly.

Democracy is messy. It is messy whether you've been doing it since 1789 or whether you're going to do it for the first time in 2005. The trouble with Democracy is, you hold elections. The trouble with dictatorships is...you don't.

The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.

Since James Madison day (and long before), there have been constant struggles over "democratic governance".

From literature to ecology, from the escape velocity of galaxies to the greenhouse effect, from garbage disposal methods to traffic jams, everything is discussed in our world. But the democratic system, as if it were a given fact, untouchable by nature until the end of time, we don't discuss that.

So yes in theory there is a kind of a formal democracy and in many ways these were achievements and an improvement over the feudal system and more advanced than anything else in the world, but nothing that we ought to call democracy.

In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.

There are a lot of benefits representative of government and it is far better than any type of dictatorial system and it is far better than a one-man rule situation.