Germaine de Staël Quotes

The ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than the temporary failures of democracy.

It is subversive to set up inquisitions like this, state or national, into the thoughts and consciences of Americans.... It is subversive for commissions like this to spread hysteria and intimidation throughout the land that Americans are afraid to sign petitions, afraid to read progressive magazines, afraid to make out checks for liberal causes, afraid to join organizations, afraid to speak their mind on public issues. Americans dare not be free citizens! This is the destruction of democracy.

Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.

Which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?

Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.

In a hundred years to come my people will not be fit for liberty. They do not know what it is….Despotism is the proper government for them.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both….

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence democracy, and the other tyranny.

We know, deep down, that repression is not the wave of the future. We know that the desire for freedom is not confined to, or owned by, any culture; it is the inborn hope of our humanity. We know that free governments are the only way to ensure that the strong are just and the weak are valued. And we know that when we lose sight of our ideals, it is not democracy that has failed. It is the failure of those charged with preserving and protecting democracy.

The transfer is a monumental occasion as the Iraqi people take control of their government and their future and forge ahead with creating a society governed by the tenets of life, liberty and freedom.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

I have great confidence in Taiwan's democracy. I have great confidence in the universal value and in basic human rights, and I have great confidence that referenda will eventually take root and become part of our daily lives in Taiwan.

Democracy means that people can say what they want to. All the people. It means that they can vote as they wish. All the people. It means that they can worship God in any way they feel right, and that includes Christians and Jews and voodoo doctors as well.

We invaded Iraq to change a totalitarian, despotic regime, and we have been successful there.

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

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

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.

Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.