You can't put democracy and freedom back into a box.
George W. Bush

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville

What is most important for democracy is not that great fortunes should not exist, but that great fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In that way there are rich men, but they do not form a class.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Running a school where the students all succeed, even if some students have to help others to make the grade, is good preparation for democracy.
William Glasser

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw

The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.
Woodrow Wilson

The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
Woodrow Wilson

Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.
Woodrow Wilson

My own ideals for the university are those of a genuine democracy and serious scholarship. These two, indeed, seem to go together.
Woodrow Wilson

Democracy is indispensable to socialism.
Vladimir Lenin

Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy.
Ron Paul

I think it is absolutely essential in a democracy to have competition in the media, a lot of competition, and we seem to be moving away from that.
Walter Cronkite

Democracy shows not only its power in reforming governments, but in regenerating a race of men and this is the greatest blessing of free governments.
Andrew Jackson

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Aldous Huxley

Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy.
Benito Mussolini

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.
Gilbert K. Chesterton