Quotes about Democratic Freedoms

Simon Sebag Montefiore

The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders.

Chester Bowles

It is the duty of the liberal to protect and extend the basic democratic freedoms.

Mikhail Gorbachev

In effect, according to Lenin, socialism and democracy are indivisible. By gaining democratic freedoms the working masses come to power.

Edward Said

We cannot accept that democratic freedoms need to be abrogated to protect Islam.

Said was commenting on the furor that developed in 1989 when Iran Ayatollah Khomeini issued a Muslim legal opinion—a fatwa--calling for the death of, and offered a bounty on, Salman Rushdie whose book, Satanic Verses, contained material to which they objected as blasphemy:

James McGreevey

The history of America is to expand civil liberties in a responsible and civil manner. We need to remember that our wonderful Democracy with its freedoms has been working.

Corazon Aquino

When you restore democracy, you cannot say that only those who worked for the restoration of democracy will be allowed to use the privileges of a democracy.

Augusto Pinochet

The freedoms which had been so hard won from colonial domination were being crushed by Soviet-inspired and funded military and political forces. Their clear intention was to deprive the people of their democratic freedoms. As history shows, this is what had happened in the Soviet Union and in Cuba, and continues to be the case in other parts of the world.

Ahmet Kenan Evren

Can the rights and freedoms of millions of virtuous people who believe in democracy be safeguarded if those who seek to destroy it abuse rights and freedoms to achieve their goals?

Turkey was at the time, a democratic Islamic state that was not very respectful of civil rights. They had a well-organized, fanatic and brutal PKK terrorist movement to contend with. The also had fundamentalist Islamic terrorists who would destroy the secular democracy that Turkey had built. He raised the classic issue of whether those who would deny civil rights to all, should have the benefit of civil rights while they attack and undermine the democratic society be undemocratic means.

Lee R. Raymond

A free economy is as essential to society as democratic political institutions. A strong market-based economy is the fertile ground for democratic freedoms that we think are important.

Barack Obama

We can lose so much of what we've gained in terms of the kind of democratic freedoms and market-based economies and prosperity that we've come to take for granted.

Democratic Freedoms Quotes