Donella Meadows Quotes

The vitality of democracy depends on popular knowledge of complex questions.

Democracy is not just voting for your leaders; it's really premised upon ordinary citizens understanding the issues.

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

Useless knowledge can be made directly contributory to a force of sound and disinterested public opinion.

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.

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.

A State which has universal suffrage and a wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the people by education to rightly exercise the great powers with which they are invested.

We Americans have the great gifts of freedom and democracy, but it has been our education system that has fulfilled the promise of democracy.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don't know how to read, you don't know how to decide. That's the great thing about our country - we're a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Without an educated populace, democracy cannot sustain itself.

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

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge, which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

Reading builds the educated and informed electorate so vital to our democracy.

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.

A constitutional democracy is in serious trouble if its citizenry does not have a certain degree of education and civic virtue.

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.

As Americans, it is up to all of us to be well informed and thoughtful, to help our country make the right decisions in this time or testing.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Let us by all wise and constitutional measures promote intelligence among the people as the best means of preserving our liberties.

Essentially, social education is moral education, and moral education is preparation for citizenship... When Jefferson and others advocated public education, it was to prepare for citizenship in a new, constitutional, democratic society.

In a well-functioning democracy, people frequently encounter topics and points of view that they did not specifically select but from which they learn. Those encounters can change minds and, even, the course of lives.

Democracy depends on well educated and engaged citizens.

A democracy is predicated on an educated citizenry. You cannot have a democracy with people that are more interested in what Nicole Kidman is doing or whoever the latest fashion model is.