Friends

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The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.

 

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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 the government to the utmost.

 

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That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.

 

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Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.

 

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A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

 

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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

 

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There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust.

 

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It is not the fact of liberty

 

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The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.

 

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Of all forms of government and society, those of free men and women are in many respects the most brittle. They give the fullest freedom for activities of private persons and groups who often identify their own interests, essentially selfish, with the general welfare.

 

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Democracy is itself, a religious faith. For some it comes close to being the only formal religion they have.

 

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Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

 

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The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it. [1941]

 

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The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.

 

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As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.

 

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When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.

 

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In 1929 the wise, far-seeing electors of my native Hereford sent me to Westminster and, two years later, the lousy bastards kicked me out.

 

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The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.

 

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Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

 

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In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.