Edward Broadbent Quotes

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.

If a democracy is to remain real and stable, the majority must be humane and farsighted enough to take care of minorities who have serious objections to the majorities point of view and who, because of lack of numbers, do not have the political strength to impose their own policy solutions through their own political power.

Democracy, Whiggery, and Cliquery, will attract their elements and foment divisions among the people, to accomplish fancied schemes and accumulate power …

I've never understood multi-party democracy. It's hard enough with two parties.

I'm the one who initiated the democratic process.

The reality is that when three or four networks are at the table with three or four political parties, someone is going to be the victim.

Politics is not a game for naive thinkers. You may go in as an idealist, but you certainly won't come out as one.

The parliamentary regime is a regime of parties

Policy and politics are always mixed up.

In all political regulations, good cannot be complete, it can only be predominant.

We all know that in democracies, some of these [necessary] reforms are unpopular.

The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.

Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important. That's not how we were meant to govern.

Democracy doesn't mean I always get my way. It doesn't mean we always get what we want.

In a multi-party democracy, many issues which you want - or do not want - will be raised. It is for us to make it relevant or not so relevant with our answers.

Believe it or not, we all share the same values in the Labour party, but there will always be differences of opinion on policy - that is in the nature of the broad-church political parties we have under our flawed first-past-the-post electoral system.

Politics is the art of realizing what there is to realize.

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

I enjoyed my stay in the Congress. Most people do not. And too many people who have been elected really don't understand the nature of government.

The practical core of democracy, defined functionally, is the peaceful exchange of power between different groups of powerful political players arranged in parties.

I think for voters what matters is the values that drive the government.

We tend to think of politics as bad, full of dirty tricks, negative ads, big campaigns, but I am here to explore the original meaning of politics, which is positive and has to do with balancing competing interests and looking for solutions.

Power is action; the electoral principle is discussion. No political action is possible when discussion is permanently established.

The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.