American Democracy Quotes

“If you can see, hear, feel, and think, you should know that King Dollar rules the United States, and that the workers are robbed and exploited in this country to the heart's content of the masters.

If you are not deaf, dumb, and blind, then you know that the American bourgeois democracy and capitalistic civilization are the worst enemies of labor and progress, and that instead of protecting them, you should help to fight to destroy them.”
― Alexander Berkman

“If the federal government should overpass the just bounds of its authority and make a tyrannical use of its powers, the people, whose creature it is, must appeal to the standard they have formed, and take such measures to redress the injury done to the Constitution as the exigency may suggest and prudence justify.”
― Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers

“The path to the ethnic democratization of American society is through its culture, that is to say through its cultural apparatus, which comprises the eyes, the ears, and the "mind" of capitalism and is twentieth-century voice to the world. Thus to democratize the cultural apparatus is tantamount to revolutionizing American society itself into the living realization of its professed ideas. Seeing the problem in another way, to revolutionize the cultural apparatus is to deal fundamentally with the unsolved American question of nationality--Which group speaks for America and for the glorification of which ethnic image? Either all group images speak for themselves and for the nation, or American nationality will never be determined.”
― Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership

“Yet the enslavement of Africans—over 20 percent of the population—served as the linchpin of American democracy; that is, the much-heralded stability and continuity of American democracy was predicated upon black oppression and degradation. Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"—they would be only Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and others engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity. What made America distinctly American for them was not simply the presence of unprecedented opportunities, but the struggle for seizing these opportunities in a new land in which black slavery and racial caste served as the floor upon which white class, ethnic, and gender struggles could be diffused and diverted. In other words, white poverty could be ignored and whites' paranoia of each other could be overlooked primarily owing to the distinctive American feature: the basic racial divide of black and white peoples. From 1776 to 1964… this racial divide would serve as a basic presupposition for the expansive functioning of American democracy, even as the concentration of wealth and power remained in the hands of a Few well-to-do white men.”
― Cornel West, Race Matters

“The Capitol is not a building, it's a symbol of our democracy, and an assault on it is an assault on everything that we've achieved as a civilized people.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“You know, we were very overconfident about these institutions and how well designed they are. Then it turned out that a lot of what makes American democracy work happened by, you know, it was really norms rather than laws or a general agreement. You know, that, for example, that the president publishes his tax returns. You know, that wasn't a law, it was just a habit. You know, maybe it's time to make it a law. So thinking carefully about what changes we can make to ensure genuine legitimacy and also to ensure people's feelings and belief in legitimacy, I think that's another important addition to the conversation.”
― Anne Applebaum

“With our powerful founding story, our unusual reverence for our Constitution, our geographic isolation, and our two centuries of relative economic success, modern Americans have long been convinced that liberal democracy, once achieved, was impossible to reverse. The founders themselves were not so certain: their beloved classical authors taught them that history was circular, that human nature was flawed, and that special measures were needed to precent democracy from sliding back into tyranny. But American history, to most modern Americans, does not feel circular. On the contrary, it is often told as a tale of progress, forward and upward, with the Civil War as a blip in the middle. Cultural despair does not come easily to a nation that believed in the Horatio Alger myth and Manifest Destiny. Pessimism is an alien sentiment in a state whose founding documents, the embodiment of the Enlightenment, contain one of the most optimistic views of the possibilities of human government ever written.”
― Anne Applebaum, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism

“One problem with democracy as it plays in our country is that the majority rules so hard; we seem bent on dividing all things into a contest of Win and Lose, and declaring that the Losers are losers. Nearly half of us are routinely asked to disappear while the slim majority works its will. But the playing field is the planet earth, and I for one have no place else to go.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Small Wonder

“Living in America exposes a citizen to the refined genteelness that draws some people to public services as well as the glad-handing politicians and their bucket brigade of minions fervidly running interference for their party’s headline hunting political agendas. The clash of social tension, imagery of racial and class outrage, and frequent raucous celebrations inundate America. Americans are also targets to the ceaseless wave of propaganda spewed out by national and international companies hawking their plastic products. The unadulterated grotesque mélange spit out by the American publicity machine exposes its citizenry to more meaningless mental pulp than other any other county’s citizens must tolerate. Public debates, scandals, violence, political grandstanding, and crisis management drive much of the public discourse. American politics is an oily affair, akin to watching a pack of overfed, flushed face, and breathless contestants chasing a greased pig at a county fair. Politics is class warfare and American politics contains its share of Rambo politicians. Warring American political parties include Taliban subgroups, people who would prefer to cut the heads off their ideological enemies.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster

“America stakes a relatively modest claim to world history when compared to other nations. Perhaps this lack of historical longevity partially accounts for why each generation of Americans tends to define themselves based largely upon the flashbulb remembrances that took place during their lifetime. Despite the relative newness of The United States of America emergence as a great power, post-Vietnam Americans display no deeply entwined interest in their national heritage. The battle cries of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and the battle hymns of World War I and World War II seem like ancient relics in the springtime commencement of the digital age. Today’s consumerism society brazenly casted aside the legacy of its predecessors similar to how one would toss away a functionally obsolete toaster, bulky television set, or land phone when the newest and slimmest best thing comes along. It is a fundamental mistake to forget the embryonic stages of America. When a nation’s citizens respect the accomplishments of its ancestors, the populous feels spiritually rooted. Without a clear vision and a unified approach, America will never become the beacon of universal justice.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“So here we are in the Capitol of the United States of America on Capitol Hill, the acropolis of our nation. It is a building like no other in the land, wherein the highest aspirations of a free and open society have been written into law, generation after generation, where, time and again, brave and eloquent words have changed history, and where the best and some of the worst of human motivations have been plainly on display.”
― David McCullough, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For

“In fact if one simply considers the similarities between religion and government, it can seem quite odd that anyone would imagine the authority of the two should be anything but united. Religious and political regimes are both about governing people. Both lay down rules for doing so. Both regard these rules as expressing moral values, the way things ought and ought not to be. Both insist that these normative rules are authoritatively binding on people. Moreover, any religion is a comprehensive worldview which necessarily includes the political, social, and all the other dimensions of human life. From all this the conclusion would seem to necessarily follow: since God is Lord of all creation and since His truth is one, religious and political authority must be one. If they are not, social peace and godly order are impossible. Looked at strictly in these terms, the Taliban has a point.”
― Hugh Heclo, Christianity and American Democracy

“Is a national election really an important issue? Does it really matter very much who wins? The platforms of the two parties are carefully made as much alike as possible. And when the election is over, we're all advised to accept the result like good sports...

Voting is a device for blaming conditions on the people. The people aren't rulers, they're scapegoats. And they file to the polls every so often to renew their right to the title.”
― B.F. Skinner, Walden Two

“Consider the Johnson House and the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival in Germantown together as sites of joy, freedom, celebration and resilience in the face of tremendous odds and struggle. Both operate at the intersection of Black protest, Black ritual and Black pomp and circumstance. Together, they embody the legacy and ongoing project of Black liberation, and show us exactly what it looks like in a majority-Black neighborhood in Philadelphia, a northern city that is not only the birthplace of American democracy but has its own complicated history. Together, they connect to Galveston, Texas 5, the birthplace of the Juneteenth holiday and a southern city that is 1,500 miles away.”
― Tieshka K Smith, Compositions of Black Joy: A Visual Chronicle of the Philadelphia Juneteenth Festival

“The stifling of opportunities for mass participation in America has inevitably meant the throttling of interest in America as such. Social interests have been displaced by selfish interests. The people no longer think as Americans for America. They no longer speak as Americans for America. They speak for their interest cliques. The welfare of their narrow groups completely overshadows any thoughts of national welfare.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals

“The job ahead is clear. Every conceivable effort must be made to rekindle the fire of democracy while a few embers yet glow in the gray ashes of the American dream. Once it goes out it may take generations before a new fire can be started. The fire, the energy, and the life of democracy is popular pressure. Democracy itself is a government constantly responding to continuous pressures of its people. The only hope for democracy is that more people and more groups will become articulate and exert pressure upon their government. It is short-sighted to attack the few major pressure groups in this country as “dangerous lobbyists” or “un-American,” for although these pressure blocs are seeking primarily to further their own interests, their organizing and bringing pressures to bear upon the government is participation and democratic activity which is infinitely more American, more democratic than the dry, dead rot of inactivity, of refusing to become involved in pressure groups. When we talk of democratic citizenship we talk and think in terms of an informed, active, participating, interested people — an interested and participating people is popular pressure!”
― Saul D. Alinsky, Reveille for Radicals