Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

Authoritarianism provides a kind of negative stability. Democracy creates space to do a lot of things, sometimes bad things, dangerous things.

Poverty in a democracy is as much to be preferred to what is called prosperity under despots, as freedom is to slavery.

The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied.

It is not good to have a rule of many.

But there is a big difference in working for the West and working for a totalitarian state.

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.

Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Freedom's skeptics must understand that the democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator who loves you.

The Chinese people are not a new kind of human nature. Human nature in China is the same as it is elsewhere. When you start in a tyrannical regime to hand out freedom there is no place to draw that line and expect that line to hold. And so it’s only a matter of time before this regime comes down

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

There is a very long history of oppression in the Arab world, particularly in the states he mentions: Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, as well as in Sudan and Tunisia. These regimes are not based on democracy and their legitimacy comes from military dictatorships or inherited systems. The basic right of an individual to voice his or her opinion is not granted in any kind of form in the Arab world.

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

Democracy! Savage and Wild!—thou who wouldst bring down the virtuous to the level of folly and guilt! Thou child of squinting envy and self-tormenting spleen.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

You don’t go from tyranny to democracy overnight.

No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the facade of democratic institutions.

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

America's objective today should be to try to make herself the best possible mirror of democracy that she can. The people of the world can see what happens here. They watch us to see what we are going to do and how well we can do it. We are giving them the only possible picture of democracy that we can: the picture as it works in actual practice. This is the only way other peoples can see for themselves how it works; and can determine for themselves whether this thing is good in itself, whether it is better than they have, better than what other political and economic systems offer them.

The end of some of the harshest dictatorships has not necessarily spelled a more free world. The extinction of the thing we despise is not giving rise to the democracy we hoped for.

People mistake majoritarianism for democracy.

Our liberty cannot depend on the good intention of those in power.

Where annual elections end, there tyranny begins..

No democracy pretends to be a tyranny. Most tyrannies pretend they are democracies. Democracy remains the definition of political legitimacy.

In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.