Meles Zenawi Quotes

Democracy should be home grown.

There is a lack of emphasis and detail on self-government of business enterprises and community government. There is too much emphasis on the part that the Project Director and his staff play. Governmental officials should not impose their will on the residents, but the government should be formulated by the residents. It is absolutely essential that the personnel understand and sympathize with the policy of self-government.

With much care and skill power has been broken into fragments in the American township, so that the maximum possible number of people have some concern with public affairs.

A much better course would be a gradual development of democracy, not through general elections, but rather through civil society and the strengthening of local institutions.

The value of democracy lies in the fact that good or bad government has its roots in the localities where people know each other and where they account for their actions to their neighbors.

All Americans deserve to see, speak to, and hear from our candidates. No county is insignificant, no community too small, and each person's vote is important.

When the panchayat raj is established, public opinion will do what violence can never do.

The consequences of these institutions (The towns or districts, the congregations, the schools,and the militia.) have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village.

Town meetings are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within the people's reach.

I am sure that every one of my colleagues - Democrat, Republican, and Independent - agrees with that statement. That in the voting booth, every one is equal.

As free citizens in a political democracy, we have a responsibility to be interested and involved in the affairs of the human community, be it at the local or the global level.

We are thus brought to a conception of Democracy not merely as a sentiment which desires the well-being of all men, nor yet as a creed which believes in the essential dignity and equality of all men, but as that which affords a rule of living as well as a test of faith.

A town meeting is a legislature of citizens, for citizens, and by citizens. The fact that each citizen of the town is also a legislator separates the New England town meeting from all other forms of democracy.

Real equality is the soul of the state in a democracy

We have achieved political democracy. Now we must make certain it reaches the minds and souls of our people.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

The more responsibility you can move toward local government, the better of you're going to be … City governments do better than their State governments in terms of accountability.

I believe that every member [of Congress] ought to be equal in fact, no less than in theory.

[Out government] is the government of all; its powers are delegated by all; it represents all, and acts for all.

Perhaps democracy should be begun at the local level first. America was many local democracies before democracy came to the national level.

Each county elector makes his own rules

Quite as serious an error [of the French] is the failure to provide for local self-government. As this lies at the bottom of republican institutions, and should be, moreover, the first concern of democracy

The function of democratic living is not to lower standards but to raise those that have been too low.

I would rather have 1000 school board members than one president and no school board members.