Nicolae Ceausescu Quotes

A democracy can't succeed without people's participation. 'MyGov' empowers the people of India to contribute towards Surajya.

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.

But are we even capable of maintaining a Republic anymore? Are there enough citizens willing to do the hard work that self-rule requires, or have we become a people who would rather be cared for, fed, clothed, housed, and told what's best for us by a parentlike state? Unfortunately, the evidence suggests the latter.

Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation ofall men into a few men.

Well, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.

Democracy means far more than the right to vote every five years. It means the right to participate in every aspect of national and community life. The people must believe that they can take part.

Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry.

Turning politics into a spectator sport is one of the subtle processes which supports globalization. It converts or transforms the citizen from an actor to a spectator, with illusions of participation.

While the state exists there is no freedom; when there is freedom, there will be no state.

If we believe in a democratic system, we have to accept the will of the people.

I do not want to abandon representative democracy. I want to see it balanced by popular sovereignty, especially the variety known as deliberative democracy.

If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave.

I'm a citizen in a democracy. To call me an activist would be redundant. It's not a spectator sport. If we all become non-participants, it no longer works.

Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes.

As I was saying, half a democracy is showing up and people have got not only to agree with this agenda, some of these third parties listeners, they've got to show up.

Democracy can be sustained and developed only by people who understand its essence.

True democracy is not inconsistent with a few persons representing the spirit, the hope and the aspirations of those whom they claim to represent.

The consequences of these institutions (The towns or districts, the congregations, the schools,and the militia.) have been, that the inhabitants, having acquired from their infancy the habit of discussing, of deliberating, and of judging of public affairs, it was in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place, and their resolutions were taken from the beginning to the end of the disputes and the war with Great Britain.

If you have reservations about the system and want to change it, the democratic argument goes, do so within the system: put yourself forward as a candidate for political office, subject yourself to the scrutiny and the vote of fellow citizens. Democracy does not allow for politics outside the democratic system. In this sense, democracy is totalitarian.

No government can be free that does not allow all its citizens to participate in the formation and execution of her laws.

Politics is the practical exercise of the art of self-government, and somebody must attend to it if we are to have self-government; somebody must study it, and learn the art, and exercise patience and sympathy and skill to bring the multitude of opinions and wishes of self-governing people into such order that some prevailing opinion may be expressed and peaceably accepted. Otherwise, confusion will result either in dictatorship or anarchy. The principal ground of reproach against any American citizen should be that he is not a politician. Everyone ought to be, as Lincoln was.

Democracy only works when we claim it as our own.

For me democracy is the only way of life. The opposite is dictatorship or anarchy.

Popular congresses are the only means to achieve popular democracy. Any system of government other than popular congresses is undemocratic.

A republican form of government, without intelligence in the people, must be, on a vast scale, what a mad-house, without superintendent or keepers, would be on a small one.