Fabrizio Moreira Quotes

Australians find the American political system lovable but odd.

The debate is ended. Fifty percent plus one vote is all we need to govern this country.

I was in Australia for many years. And the system there is a two-party system and the government changes from time to time.

In America, we have a two-party system, and the American Constitution is a piece of brilliance, but they did not know when they set it up we would just have a two-party system. It just so happens that our electorate pushed towards the two-party system because it's a very good way to govern.

We are on the precipice of a crisis, a Constitutional crisis. The checks and balances, which have been at the core of this Republic, are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances that say if you get 51% of the vote, you don't get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it's almost a temper tantrum.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

I am more convinced than ever that a lively two party system is essential to our democracy.

Your political system is actually too democratic. The fact that Americans vote on every bill and proposition can prolong bigotry indefinitely, especially where it is aimed at minority groups.

All I will say is that there are particular features of the American constitutional system that renders a third party futile - at best.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

I think there's a lot of problems with being a two-party system.

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.

The Electoral College is an antidemocratic relic.

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule-- and both commonly succeed, and are right.

The United States is dangerously close to becoming a democracy instead of a republic.

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy no one has his way.

All free governments are party governments.

No error is more common than to confound democracy as an element in national character with democracy as a form of government.… Now the two are not only not identical, but they are not even necessarily coexistent. By the former we understand that spirit in a people which leads them to demand equality among citizens and a substantial control over their own affairs; by the latter, a system in which the people pronounce directly on all the details of government.

The ballot box is a license to govern, not a mandate to rule.

In America you've got a one party state except that you've got two of them.

In a democracy, you can be right and still lose power.

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

Democracy in some ways is a very illogical political system. When you win an election, you have to preserve the institutions that would make it possible for your political enemies to win next time. If you think about it, that's almost antithetical to human nature.

As we've always said, in politics the person with the biggest number wins.

Our system of government in Israel has permitted minority groups and sectarian parties to force their way on the majority.