Elizabeth Coleman Quotes

Democratic processes require time.

I raise this objection to debate the process, and protect the integrity of the true will of the people.

I'm the one who initiated the democratic process.

Democracy is a process.

Democracy is much too important to be left to public opinion.

Democracy, in brief, requires government by parties because the citizens are too numerous, too ill-informed and too preoccupied to come together spontaneously to choose the policies and leaders they wish to prevail. Political machinery has to be worked. The parties work it.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.

We are in a democracy, and I think for all issues, whatever matters that the opposition may have apprehension on, there is a forum, and it is called Parliament.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.

If a man went simply by what he saw, he might be tempted to affirm that the essence of democracy is melodrama.

In a democracy there is a centralization of governmental power in a simple majority.

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.

Under universal suffrage the elected are those who know best how to take in the masses. The minority, which may happen to be the half minus one, is sacrificed.

The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision of majorities,--how can the large majorities beyond parliament be expected not to wish to decide? If, from above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is to be expected than that those below should dance?

Above all, democracy means pluralism.

Democracy is about opposition.

Democracy is messy.

In a democracy, if the people don’t vote, the policies are made by others….The major decisions of our society are going to be made by our elected officials, like it or not.

I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.

Liberal democracies have their own means of holding leaders accountable. They are called elections.

The voices of a billion Indians … are telling us that the course of their lives cannot be decided by a handful of people behind closed doors who are not fully accountable to them. They are telling us that India’s governmental system … robs people of their voice, a system that disempowers rather than empowering.

Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, by all the people.

We can conceive of various kinds of democracy.