Democratic Quotes - page 35
Perhaps this is an obvious point, but the democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived. Leaders of the media claim that their new choices rest on unbiased professional and objective criteria, and they have support for this contention in the intellectual community. If, however, the powerful are able to fix the premises of discourse, to decide what the general populace is allowed to see, hear, and think about, and to "manage” public opinion by regular propaganda campaigns, the standard view of how the system works is at serious odds with reality.
Noam Chomsky
Mass education was designed to turn independent farmers into docile, passive tools of production. That was its primary purpose. And don't think people didn't know it. They knew it and they fought against it. There was a lot of resistance to mass education for exactly that reason. It was also understood by the elites. Emerson once said something about how we're educating them to keep them from our throats. If you don't educate them, what we call "education," they're going to take control -- "they" being what Alexander Hamilton called the "great beast," namely the people. The anti-democratic thrust of opinion in what are called democratic societies is really ferocious. And for good reason. Because the freer the society gets, the more dangerous the great beast becomes and the more you have to be careful to cage it somehow.
Noam Chomsky
The bishops play the hero and say they are ready to fight, even if it costs them their lives. The fight against whom? Against the people's government, of course, against our new democratic Yugoslavia ... But how is it that the bishops did not issue this kind of pastoral letter, to be read in all the churches, in the days of Pavelić and the Germans, against those terrible massacres of Serbs in Croatia in which hundreds of thousands of women, children and menfolk lost their lives?
Josip Broz Tito
I'd have to think about that a lot more and probably study a little bit more. But the easy first answer is the United States. The idea that you have a nation started with what you could term a fork. So a fork from the United Kingdom in terms of the American revolution, definitely went through some bumpy parts along the way but sort of ended up as one of the freest places in the world. Especially in regards to speech and property ownership rights and the democratic system. It isn't perfect, but is one of the best things out there. One of the things that I love is the equality of opportunity where its a meritocracy. It's not as important who you are, but it's more what you do. You can have a huge amount of opportunity and the ability to succeed regardless of what you've done before or been involved in.
Matt Mullenweg
Patel's speech at Bahaddin College, Junagadh: "If Hyderabad does not see the writing on the wall, it goes the way Junagadh has gone. Pakistan attempted to set off Kashmir against Junagadh. When we raised the question of settlement in a democratic way, they (Pakistan) at once told us that they would consider it if we applied that policy to Kashmir. Our reply was that we would agree to Kashmir if they agreed to Hyderabad.
Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel
The power structure in Britain is changing. Authority is no longer obeyed for its own sake. There are severe limits on what government can do, so the way to win the battle against inflation and unemployment is not to try to dragoon the country. If we do we shall fail. We must secure its consent. We are playing for high stakes. In a real sense, adherence to the social contract puts on trial whether our society has the will and determination to solve its problems by democratic means.
James Callaghan
They came up and we did Sound Of The Crowd. They were under the impression that I was going to work on what they'd done so far and improve that and carry on. I said, ‘No, I'm not doing that, we're starting again', which was a bit of a shock for Phil. He argued about that but I said, ‘No, if I'm going to produce you, you're going to do what I tell you to do. I will listen to your arguments and consider them, and if I still think I'm right we do it my way or it's the highway. This is my attitude to everybody I produce, it's a sort of democratic dictatorship!
Martin Rushent
But let me stress again that these are my views - for contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic. I do not speak for my church on public matters - and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President - on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject - I will make my decision in accordance with these views, in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressures or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise. But if the time should ever come - and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible - when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.
John F. Kennedy
We talk endlessly of the individual and of individualism, for example, when any sensible glance at major issues indicates that we live in an era of great conformism. Our societies turn upon democratic principles, yet the quasi totality of our leading citizens refuse to take part in that process and, instead, leave the exercise of political power to those for whom they have contempt. Our business leaders hector us in the name of capitalism, when most of them are no more than corporate employees, isolated from personal risk.
John Ralston Saul
The rational elites, obsessed by structure, have become increasingly authoritarian in a modern, administrative way. The citizens feel insulted and isolated. They look for someone to throw stones on their behalf. Any old stone will do. The cruder the better to crush the self-assurance of the obscure men and their obscure methods. The New Right, with its parody of democratic values, has been a crude but devastating stone with which to punish the modern elites. The New Left, which will eventually succeed it, could easily turn out to be equally crude.
John Ralston Saul
Ever since the democratic systems permitted their various courts to give corporations the status of persons, the individual as citizen has been on the defensive. How could it be otherwise? If you are a person before the law and Exxon or Ford is also a person, it is clear that the concept of democratic legitimacy lying with the individual has been mortally wounded.
John Ralston Saul
Anti-intellectualism ... first got its strong grip on our ways of thinking because it was fostered by an evangelical religion that also purveyed many humane and democratic sentiments. It made its way into our politics because it became associated with our passion for equality. It has become formidable in our education partly because our educational beliefs are evangelically egalitarian. Hence, as far as possible, our anti-intellectualism must be excised from the benevolent impulses upon which it lives by constant and delicate acts of intellectual surgery which spare these impulses themselves.
Richard Hofstadter
I realize there is a great lack of information about what I did as governor of California and it increases the farther east you go. As a result of this, I know that the minority community has an impression that I have little or no interest in their problems. When I became governor I discovered that after eight years of liberal Democratic rule in Sacramento, very little outside of rhetoric had been done for the minorities. The civil service regulations were such that it was virtually impossible for a black employee of state government to rise above the very lowest job levels. We got those rules changed.
Ronald Reagan
