Thomas Mann Quotes

The Americans are the first people whom heaven has favored with an opportunity of deliberating upon and choosing forms of government under which they should live.

We love your adherence to democratic principles.

While democracy must have its organization and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.

The road to democracy may be winding and is like a river taking many curves, but eventually the river will reach the ocean.

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.

Democracy doesn't recognize east or west; democracy is simply people's will. Therefore, I do not acknowledge that there are various models of democracy; there is just democracy itself.

Democracy is an extraordinary adventure. It's difficult, full of daring and risk and danger. But it's the greatest gift we have.

Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.

Democracy may not prove in the long run to be as efficient as other forms of government, but it has one saving grace: it allows us to know and say that it isn't.

Democracy literally means the power of people. Democracy is not about politics, it is about the people.

Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history ... It was written in Magna Carta..

Democracy arose from men thinking that if they are equal in any respect they are equal in all respects.

The foundation upon which democracy rests is faith in the moral instincts of the people. Its ballot boxes, the franchise, its laws, and constitutions are but the outward manifestations of the deeper and more essential thing—a continuing trust in the moral purposes of the average man and woman.

If any ask me what a free government is, I answer, that for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of the matter.

Democracy, once unleashed, is a pretty powerful force.

In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can face and live with the truth about itself.

Let The People Rule

A democratic government must always be left free to be operated upon by the will of the majority of the time being. All that the government of the day can do is to ascertain what now appears to be the best principle.

The most profound argument for democracy is its faith in man.

In democracies the people seem to act as they please.

Where there is only a national representative government without local self-government, there is no liberty as we understand it

Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men's enlightened will.

The present generation has the same right of self-government which the past one has exercised for itself.

America's objective today should be to try to make herself the best possible mirror of democracy that she can. The people of the world can see what happens here. They watch us to see what we are going to do and how well we can do it. We are giving them the only possible picture of democracy that we can: the picture as it works in actual practice. This is the only way other peoples can see for themselves how it works; and can determine for themselves whether this thing is good in itself, whether it is better than they have, better than what other political and economic systems offer them.