Democratic Resilience Quotes

We don't duck democratic choices out of fear of fascists.

Fine tuning the institutions built by powdered wig guys two hundred years ago is a long shot at holding the whole thing together.

While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the government in the short space of four years.

For my part, in everything I do, I aim to strengthen democracy in Germany and beyond. The United States is also a strong democracy. As we are seeing in Poland, for example, and also in Hungary, it is important that we have counterweights in democratic systems, and I believe they are still strong in America.

If the terrorists were to explode even one suitcase-sized nuclear weapon in a Western city, democratic institutions might not survive. The security agencies in the Western democracies would be granted, or would simply seize, powers comparable to those of the Gestapo and the KGB…. I doubt that democratic institutions will be resilient enough to stand the strain.

If a catastrophic event wipes out a large portion of House members, America needs to know this body, elected by the people, will be quickly and legally reconstituted and will continue to function.

I believe that during these times, we should not forget that many sacrificed to regain our democracy.

Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.

It will be difficult, even painful, but democracy will prevail in Russia. There will be no dictatorship, although relapses into authoritarianism are possible.

My belief in the growth and permanence of democracy is undimmed. I know that the people will cast off the new dictatorship as they did the old. I believe as firmly as in my youth that humanity will surmount the era of poverty and war. Life will be happier and more beautiful for all. I believe in the GOLDEN AGE.

The fact that the Constitution is sufficiently open-ended to infuriate all Americans almost equally is part of its enduring genius.

I believe, for a long time, protracted wars test the will of any democracy, to be sure, and people will underwrite a protracted war if they see some progress. But if they don't see progress, and it appears to be futile and useless, then that political support begins to evaporate rather quickly.

Indonesia is hardly immune to catastrophic breakdowns, as the anti-Communist pogrom showed. But, like India, it has been relatively fortunate in evolving a mode of politics that can include many discontinuities - of class, region, ethnicity, and religion.

I think we learn more from those times in our history where we stumbled as a democracy than we learn from the glorious chapters.

We like democracy because why? The pathologies of the U.S. version are so obvious in the aftermath of the latest averted crisis that we need to ask ourselves whether it’s worth it - and why electoral democracy hasn’t self-destructed before. Should Tunisians or Egyptians opt for the Chinese model, where rational autocrats may restrict rights, but no one threatens to blow up world markets in the name of an 18th-century tax protest?

We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Democracies are not very stable.

A republican government in a hundred points is weaker than an autocratic government; but in this one point it is the strongest that ever existed — it has educated a race of men that are men.

I think some people have blind faith in American institutions without knowing a whole lot about them and think they will stand up to Trump and are indestructible.

How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state?

In that kind of environment, where there's so much skepticism about information that's coming in, we're gonna have to spend a lot more time thinking about how do we protect our democratic process.

The genius of our founders is that they designed a system of government that can be changed. And we should take heart, because we’ve changed this country before.

That just gives sort of the democracy an opportunity to test ideas, for those who lost to catch their breath, regain energy, re-energize themselves and then get back in the arena, and then we'll make some more progress in the future.

The primary reason America has survived is that we have had leaders who've respected the Constitution, feared it and the rule of law, and we've been very lucky there.

Yet optimism is in order, because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not-at-all-fragile flower. From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none - not one regime - has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.