Jeremy Irons Quotes

The more authority a person asks for in a democracy, the less privacy they’re entitled to.

In this digital age, there is no place to hide behind public relations people. This digital age requires leaders to be visible and authentic and to be able to communicate the decisions they've made and why they've made them, to be able to acknowledge when they've made a mistake and to move forward, to engage in the debate.

One could always do more, faster and cleverer, but democracy has its own rhythm.

In Ethiopia, democracy is in its infancy and it must be nurtured along by its leaders.

Democracy has always been in crisis: democracy is all about practicing the art of bearable dissatisfaction. In democratic societies, people often complain about their leaders and their institutions. The gap between the ideal democracy and the existing one cannot be bridged.

Democracy is not about making speeches. It is about making committees work.

So I think democracy, in the long-term, in our countries will survive if it comes to be associated with leadership, will not survive if democracy plus media brings to us more and more followship rather than leadership.

If you present good government, then elections look after themselves.

Public men are bees working in a glass hive.

Each age must … contend anew with the question of power and accountability.

Self government cannot work if the people do not know what their rulers are doing and why.

I think it's time that we said to people who are incapable of acknowledging that they've ever got anything wrong: 'I'm sorry, you've had your day.' Unelected, unaccountable elites, I'm afraid it's time to say, 'You're fired. We are going to take back control.'

A functioning democracy cannot stand when its people do not trust their leaders to uphold the law.

Democracy is about criticism. I didn't elect Obama because he's a black; I voted for Obama because he was the right person at the time. Period. The exceptionalism of a black U.S. President is not important to me. It's what he does. And who he has at the table. And what he does to change the world - that's what's important.

The issues are by some geometric number - 100 or 200 or 500 - times more complicated today than we appreciated them to be when Franklin Roosevelt was around.

It's so much easier to throw rocks than it is to govern.

Democracy is not theater - it determines life and death!

Good ideas are the backbone of good government.

Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control.

At the end of the day, money is just a proxy for votes. That is what makes politics so vulnerable to social media.

Democracy without morality is impossible.

Ethics are a key issue, and they're a key issue on the Democratic side, and all people have to be held to high standards.

Watergate showed more strengths in our system than weaknesses... The whole country did take part in quite a genuine sense in passing judgment on Richard Nixon.

The Australian public are very fair and they are always prepared to give the leader of a major political party a fair go.

I see corruption as a mortal enemy for young democracies.