James W. Fulbright Quotes
Sad Quotes by James W. Fulbright

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith.
Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste,
but in its effects.
- James W. Fulbright

We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts.
We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities
that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world.
- James W. Fulbright

I think we Americans tend to put too high a price on unanimity,
as if there were something dangerous and illegitimate
about honest differences of opinion honestly expressed by honest men.
- James W. Fulbright

The best argument against democracy is
a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
- Winston Churchill

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people
by the people for the people.
- Oscar Wilde

Naturally, the common people don't want war ...
but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy,
and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in every country.
- Hermann Goering

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power,
it is called a democracy.
- Charles de Secondat

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

Every government is a parliament of whores.
The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
- P. J. O'Rourke

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work.
Of course it doesn't work.
We are supposed to work it.
- Alexander Woollcott

A healthy democracy requires a decent society;
it requires that we are honorable,
generous, tolerant and respectful.
- Charles W. Pickering

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than
half of the people are right more than half of the time.
- E. B. White

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some,
are chiefly to be found in democracy,
they will be best attained when all persons alike share
in government to the utmost.
- Aristotle

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -
it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
- Irving Kristol

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property,
are the rulers.
- Aristotle

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
- H. L. Mencken

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
- J. William Fulbright

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
- Jorge Luis Borges

A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens,
who assemble and administer the government in person.
- James Madison

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
- James Russell Lowell

So long as we have enough people in this country willing
to fight for their rights,
we'll be called a democracy.
- Roger Nash Baldwin

The flood of money that gushes into politics today
is a pollution of democracy.
- Theodore White

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
- Robert Byrne

Democracy is the only system that persists in asking
the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be.
- Sydney J. Harris

Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections
are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
- Gore Vidal

Television is democracy at its ugliest.
- Paddy Chayefsky

The ship of democracy, which has weathered all storms,
may sink through the mutiny of those on board.
- Grover Cleveland

Democracy is constructed like an edifice,
freedom by freedom, right by right, until it reaches its snapping point.
- Abdoulaye Wade

We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace,
democracy, and freedom.
- Shigeru Yoshida

Americans cannot teach democracy to the world until they restore their own.
- William Greider

The Greens have every right to run, that's what democracy is,
and they should argue their point by saying how they
think people should vote,
not by telling us to be silent.
- Peter Camejo

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between
its ideals and its realities,
between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
- Agnes Repplier

If we expose the Chinese to our freedoms,
it may create a greater hunger for democracy,
reform and liberties in China.
- Gary Locke

Democracy without morality is impossible.
- Jack Kemp

Voting is fundamental in our democracy.
It has yielded enormous returns.
- Arlen Specter

I never wanted to do biography just to tell the life of a famous man.
I always wanted to use the life of a man to examine political power,
because democracy shapes our lives.
- Robert Caro

Democracy still has a real hope and chance in Iraq,
and true freedom in this country would be the greatest
testament to those who gave their lives for it.
- Mary Landrieu

Democracy is not about making speeches.
It is about making committees work.
- Alan Bullock

I chose America as my home because I value freedom and democracy,
civil liberties and an open society.
- George Soros

El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that
there are many voices to be heard here.
Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans...
I have heard a single voice.
- Dan Quayle

If information and knowledge are central to democracy,
they are the conditions for development.
- Kofi Annan

Robert Moses wasn't elected to anything.
We're taught that in a democracy power comes from being elected.
He had more power than anyone, and he held it for 48 years.
- Robert Caro

One has the right to be wrong in a democracy.
- Claude Pepper

Remember, democracy never lasts long.
It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself.
There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
- John Adams

Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.
- Jack Schwartz

Let me say again that the relationship is asymmetrical:
there's no democracy without a market economy,
but you can have a market economy without democracy.
- Peter L. Berger

Taiwan is a budding democracy, and the people have
participated in multi-party democratic elections since 1996.
- Todd Akin

We need to remind our core supporters that we have
not forgotten their concern with the way our democracy
is being replaced by European bureaucracy in so many areas.
- John Redwood

Japan is not a Western democracy.
The Japanese have kept their traditions,
culture and heritage, but they have joined the community of free nations.
- Natan Sharansky

Since President Bush took office in 2001,
this Congress has supported an agenda of democracy,
freedom and expansion of rights for all peoples throughout the world.
- Ginny B. Waite

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are
extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
- Harry Emerson Fosdick

I like the noise of democracy.
- James Buchanan

We have had a long wait for democracy.
- Chen Shui-bian

Democracy is stronger than terrorism,
and we will not cower to the terrorists' campaign of fear.
- John Doolittle

Therefore, until the day I die, I am going to do what I can,
regardless of the cost to me, to try to stop this awful
corruption that is destroying our beloved democracy.
- John Jay Hooker

A monoculture is not only Hollywood,
but Americans trying to export democracy.
- Bernardo Bertolucci

It's important to address young people in the reopening of New Orleans.
In rebuilding, let's revisit the potential of American
democracy and American glory.
- Wynton Marsalis

Democracy, like any non-coercive relationship,
rests on a shared understanding of limits.
- Elizabeth Drew

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian
to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
- Gustave Flaubert

Nobody should be allowed to tinker with democracy.
We will not discontinue the good works of the past government.
- Manmohan Singh

Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood.
- Augusto Pinochet

I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing;
it's not a western invention.
- Garry Kasparov

It is true you cannot eat freedom and you cannot power
machinery with democracy.
But then neither can political prisoners turn on the
light in the cells of a dictatorship.
- Corazon Aquino

More socialism means more democracy,
openness and collectivism in everyday life.
- Mikhail Gorbachev

I have great confidence in Taiwan's democracy.
- Chen Shui-bian

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -
but that could change.
- Dan Quayle

One is actually the democracy here, you know,
people are, people assume that this election means
that there is democracy in Pakistan.
There is no democracy.
- Imran Khan

As the tension eases, we must look in the direction of agriculture,
industry and education as our final goals,
and toward democracy under Mr Mubarak.
- Naguib Mahfouz

Democracy is finding proximate solutions to insoluble problems.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

I believe in trade unionism, and I believe in democracy,
in democratic trade unionism.
- Richard Attenborough

However, I must say that I am very happy to see that
we have such a positive result for our first referendum
in our history and that gives me more confidence in Taiwan's democracy.
- Chen Shui-bian