Tom Davis Quotes

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.

Democracy is about opposition.

Let the people decide whom to vote for, who has more authority. And only people, only our citizens, are able to place the final emphasis, voting for this or that person or political force, or rejecting it. That's democracy.

Questioning is the great strength of democracy; the ability to doubt without losing face

Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the most ignorant part of society.

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

Among the foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their country.

Democracy does not mean perfection. It means a chance to fight for improvement.

Somehow we must be able to show people that democracy is not about words, but action.

In democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not its taste, but its effect,...

… democracy, as it exists and practically works in America, with all its threatening evils, supplies a training school for making first-class men. It is life's gymnasium..fit for freedom’s athletes… Whatever we do not attain, we at any rate attain the experiences of the fight, the hardening of the strong campaign, and throb with currents of attempt at least.

In Spain, we should have enough intelligence, enough sense of individual and collective responsibility to do for ourselves that which would be imposed upon us by a dictatorship.

Democracy is not theater - it determines life and death!

Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement.

I have made a few mistakes early on that I admit myself, and there have been times when I have gone over the top and done things that you shouldn't do in international cricket, but that's how you learn.

Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.

Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Democracy, it appears, is a bit chancy. But its chances also depend on what we do ourselves.

This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.

We create our own government. We are responsible for its beauty and for its ugliness. We are responsible for its glories and for its failures and, most important, we are responsible for amending those failures no matter who are their most immediate architects.

It's now our responsibility to prove to ourselves, to other nations, and especially to our children and our grandchildren, that politics is full of fun; politics has some wisdom. Politics is freedom.

My dream of politics all my life has been that it is the common business, that it is something we owe to each other to understand and discuss with absolute frankness.

Democracy must live as it thinks and think as it lives

Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.