Richard Dreyfuss Quotes

Just as everybody has the vote including women, I think children should, because as a child is conscious of itself then it has to me an existence and has a stake in what happens.

We are not educated well enough to perform the necessary act of intelligently selecting our leaders.

Civics is not only how to run the country before it's your turn to run the country; it is, in fact, the study of power, practical political power. And you must start that process at an age level when kids' brains are still open and malleable.

Kids automatically teach each other how to use technology, but they're not going to teach each other about the history of democracy, or the importance of taking their voices into the public sphere to create social change.

Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.

A government as good as the people.

We have achieved political democracy. Now we must make certain it reaches the minds and souls of our people.

Public participation in the process of government is the essence of democracy.

Among the foremost benefits of free government is that education of the intelligence and of the sentiments which is carried down to the very lowest ranks of the people when they are called to take a part in acts which directly affect the great interests of their country.

Education, then, as universally diffused as the elements of God, is the life-blood of our body politic. The intelligence of the people is the one great fact of our civilization and our prosperity, — it is the beating heart of our age and of our land. It is education alone which makes equality possible without anarchy, and liberty without license.

In a democracy, we have always had to worry about the ignorance of the uneducated. Today we have to worry about the ignorance of people with college degrees.

The real safeguard of democracy is education.

What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

In a democracy you cannot stop public access to that art that will most misinform the people. You cannot stop people from being misinformed. But what you can do is to educate the people to the point that they will throw the rascals out.

If you're going to have an exchange of ideas, the only thing you can do is to meet people face-to-face in front of a crowd who may think differently than you do. I mean, that's what democracy is about, isn't it?

Although universal suffrage may not be a panacea for all social problems, it does have a profound bearing on the democratic development and governance of a place.

Protecting space for civil society and citizenry is particularly critical in a world marked by rising political and economic inequality.

Getting a lot more Americans interested in politics is not the same as getting a lot more Americans knowledgeable about the workings of democracy or government. It has brought the worldview associated with sports-talk radio to politics; you’ve got a team and you want that team to win, and the other team is always the worst, and the refs are always unfairly treating your side. Heaven forbid you concede that the other team played a better game.

A democracy depends upon people getting brighter all the time. Democracies are delicate. They're not just ipso facto and just go on and on.

Unless the schools provide our children with a vision of human possibility that enlightens and empowers them with knowledge and taste, they will simply play their role in someone else's marketing schemes. Unless they understand deeply the sources of our democracy, they will take it for granted and fail to exercise their rights and responsibilities.

We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened.

The survival of American democracy depends less on the size of its armies than on the capacity of its individual citizens to rely... on the strength of their own thought.

The American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country.

All democracies demand common public education because nothing makes people so much alike as the same education.