Natan Sharansky Quotes

It is one thing to tell the citizens of some faraway country to go to hell, but it is another to do the same to your own citizens, who are supposedly your ultimate sovereigns.

There is a power in public opinion in this country - and I thank God for it: for it is the most honest and best of all powers - which will not tolerate an incompetent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow-citizens.

I am considering two things on a daily basis: what is right to do and what is wrong to do in my role as President of my people. According to my conscience, I am trying to abide by the right. My vision is peace. My vision is prosperity.

Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.

In a democracy, power implies responsibility.

The people want to exercise power but what on earth would they do with it if it were given to them?

The Catalan institutions and political parties have to be consistent, because they have the democratic legitimacy of the ballot box and they can't pass certain responsibilities on to civil society.

I like the idea of democracy. You have to have someone everyone distrusts.

Leave no authority existing not responsible to the people.

As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end.

Democracy without morality is impossible.

I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic society, events depend on a strong leadership with a strong power of persuasion, and not on the opinion of the masses.

I personally believe that those who are leaders with political power over the world will be forced some day, sooner or later, to give way to common sense and the will of the people.

What my job is, is to get on with getting the process of democratic politics, back on the road, entrenching the peace settlement, and I ask you to judge me on my record.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

The civilized world needs to think about a decision when single politicians are not allowed to stay in power.

We have to look to the well-being of the Lebanese citizens and create prosperity in the country, and you can't create prosperity without stability.

We should be therefore supporting a larger Europe, and in so doing we should strive to expand the zone of peace and prosperity in the world which is the necessary foundation for a stable international system in which our leadership could be fruitfully exercised.

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.

In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.

At least the politicians are accountable to the voters.

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.

Although elections are not perfect tools for democracy, they reinforce the relationship between the people and their leaders, empowering citizens to remove and replace their governments in a peaceful and orderly manner. The only basis for a peaceful society is providing people with the opportunity to express their opinions and their will, and elections are instrumental in doing so.

The actual rulers in a parliamentary democracy are the class of professional politicians. In theory, they are supposed to represent the people, but in fact they rule over them.

Each age must … contend anew with the question of power and accountability.