Democritus Quotes

Their poverty secured their freedom, since our desires and our possessions are the strongest fetters of despotism.

Prosperity without freedom is just another form of poverty.

Let us never allow ourselves to think that poverty is an excuse for an invitation to totalitarianism, and if we should be tempted to think as much, let us remind ourselves that totalitarianism not only extinguishes liberty but institutionalises poverty as well

If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.

Democracy cannot flourish half rich and half poor, any more than it can flourish half free and half slave.

It is futile to speak of liberty as long as economic slavery exists … poverty is slavery!

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.

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

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself. I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world.

Without democracy freedom is a chimera

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

You can't, in the 21st century, continue to live in a system where people live under martial law for 30 years.

Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.

Having lived through the transition from totalitarianism, I am acutely mindful of the need to never take for granted the basic freedoms of thought, expression and belief that democracy brings.

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.

A people inspired by democracy, human rights and economic opportunity will turn their back decisively against extremism.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

A free America... means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.

Workers ... do not eat legal rights but bread. History, especially recent history, gives much evidence to support the contention that men want security more than freedom and that for an indefinite time they may be successfully governed by a dictator who keeps in mind the maxim that 'contented cows give the best milk.'

India has political freedom but it does not have economic freedom.

The price of freedom is less than the cost of repression.

“… it is sheer moral perversity to equate the inconsistencies of a democratic civilization with the brutalities which modern tyrannical states practice.

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

Our political life is closed, and our freedoms usurped, and our people are oppressed, and fearful… if you don’t say what the ruler wants, you’re exiled beyond the sun.