Juan Manuel Santos Quotes

American democracy is a unique form of government which at the same time requires [political] competition and cooperation.

Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.

Oppositions clean and purify those in office and we in the opposition are in fact the detergents of democracy.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

If you are tired of partisanship over patriotism, you need to vote for a change in direction.

We all learn in school that the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government must check and balance each other. But other non state institutions must participate in this important system of checks and balances as well. These checking institutions include the academy, the media, religious institutions and NGOs.

Maintaining checks and balances on the power of the Judiciary Branch and the other two branches is vital to keep the form of government set up by our Founding Fathers.

Debate is almost non-existent and no one is apparently accountable to anybody apart from their political party bosses. It is bad news for democracy in this country.

It is the safeguard of the strongest that he lives under a government which is obliged to respect the voice of the weakest.

In fact, things are moving along rather well in Iraq. Nothing is perfect, of course, and freedom is messy work. The cooperation of the three major interests in Iraq has been remarkable.

Thank God for some Republican control of one branch of the government.

I've never seen Washington as divided as we are right now.

Every democratic system evolves its own conventions. It is not only the water but the banks which make the river.

The strength of representative democracy is its ability to slow down those in power who wish to govern by blank cheque, but also those not in power who wish to yank the state about on the sole basis of their self-interest.

The Senate of the United States has been both extravagantly praised and unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of its various critics…. The truth is, in this case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical. The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it.

Democracy is a slow and complex process …. Democracy is counter-intuitive. Democracy takes time to learn. It takes years or even decades to take on the habits of democracy…. If you jump too fast, the wrong people come to power…. Yes democracy, but democracy slow.

I wouldn’t be too serious about bipartisanship. It’s a great myth that ought to be fostered. And don’t bring too damn much scholarship to bear on it. You’ll prove it out of existence if you’re not careful.

The United States is a very difficult country to govern.

The U. S. put the Japanese in camps during World War II; it had McCarthyism and now they have [George W.] Bush. But it will all pass. Democracy corrects itself.

American democracy is at its best in its talent for the transfer for power.

Our democratic institutions are adversarial.

In government, consensus is more important than command; persuasion not only works better than arrogance, it's vital to the democratic process.

Our system of checks and balances .... The people keep the politicians from stealing too much, and the politicians keep the people from getting too crazy.

You have come here by the sovereign will of the people to cooperate with me in carrying out the mandate recently pronounced at the polls.

There used to be a civility. Today, members of Congress would rather destroy another member than compromise.