Joseph Stiglitz Quotes

There was a time when I could vote for economic justice, and I can't anymore.

Elections are an enduring spectacle of free India, and have provided foreign journalists with the opportunity to remind the world that India remains the world's largest democracy.

Politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

In our political system, money is power. And that means a few can have a lot more power than the rest. That's bad news for everyone else - and for our democracy itself.

Logically, in a society ostensibly grounded on representative government, it would seem reasonable that a majority of the people in a State would elect a majority of that State’s legislators.

Voters do not decide issues. They decide who will decide issues.

Politics is a choice of enemas. You're going to get it up the ass, no matter what you do.

In a democracy, in a functioning democracy, what would be happening is that popular organizations, unions, political groupings, others would be developing their programs, putting them forth, insisting that their representatives implement those programs.

Whether it is access to voting rights, representation in government, or the outsized influence of money in our political system, the opportunity to interact with and participate in democracy is available to some, but blocked for many.

We pride ourselves on our democracy, but when you see the way it actually works, I think it is worthy of contempt.

Democracy must be conceived as a process, not a goal.

Democracy, in its best state, is but the politics of Bedlam; while kept chained, its thoughts are frantic, but when it breaks loose, it kills the keeper, fires the building, and perishes.

Having a vote once every four years is not the same thing as democracy.

As an American I am of course fundamentally opposed to democracy and to anyone advocating or defending democracy, which in theory and practice is the basis of socialism.

Take the US. Women were not even able to vote until 90 ago, at about the same time they gained the right in Afghanistan. Rights of former slaves were very limited until the 1960s, and in some ways still are. In these and other domains there has been progress in democracy, though still seriously flawed. In other dimensions - the control of concentrated wealth over the political process, for example, things have gotten much worse in recent years. And there is much more, in both directions.

Democracy has both expanded and declined over the years.

Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of a morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

I think in Singapore, we stand a chance of making the one-man-one-vote system work. With amendments as we have done, you know, like GRCs.. We need to make it work. And I believe with pragmatic adjustments, given these favourable conditions, we can have more open debate.

If you give up on democracy, you might as well give up on everything.

Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from delusive to real, and make a new blessed world of us by and by.

It is on great occasions only, and after time has been given for cool and deliberate reflection, that the real voice of the people can be known.

I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.

We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I can tell you quite honestly.

There were free elections in Bulgaria, where the opposition has just won. In a democracy, the government is a reflection of society because people are elected. Sometimes the type of person from the old machine, who is everything but an appealing figure, happens to win an election. But democracy applies to everyone, not just the noble and the clever.