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"Democracy, it appears, is a bit chancy. But its chances also depend on what we do ourselves."
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"Democracy can exist only in the countries where people are brave! Coward nations always live under the authoritarian regimes!"
"I'm much more attracted personally to governments going their full term. It's very hard to have a fixed term election I know with ah... a parliamentary democracy, but I've always had an instinct to say there should be a fixed term."
"Change represents the real spirit of democracy and the real America."
"Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse."
"Self-government is in inverse ratio to numbers. The larger the constituency, the less the value of any particular vote. When he is merely one of millions, the individual elector feels himself to be impotent, a negligible quantity. The candidates he has voted into office are far away, at the top of the pyramid of power. Theoretically they are the servants of the people; but in fact it is the servants who give orders and the people, far off at the base of the great pyramid, who must obey."
"Right-to-life groups won't fund us because we're Democrats."
"Democracy functions best when we have an active citizenry."
Explore more quotes by Robert A. Dahl
"As in Athens, the right to participate was restricted to men, just as it was also in all later democracies and republics until the twentieth century."
"Democracy, it appears, is a bit chancy. But its chances also depend on what we do ourselves."
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