Richard Holbrooke Quotes

And in Canada we, you know, it costs us three or $400 million to have an election. You know, it's always been my position that we shouldn't complain about that; that's the price of admission for a living in a great democracy.

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.

If voting could change anything, they would have made it illegal.

In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty.

The process of our democracy must not be imperiled by the denial of essential powers of free government.

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

I would say that every political party must remain in some form in a state or the Centre for the sake of democracy.

Democracy is messy. It is messy whether you've been doing it since 1789 or whether you're going to do it for the first time in 2005. The trouble with Democracy is, you hold elections. The trouble with dictatorships is...you don't.

There are a lot of benefits representative of government and it is far better than any type of dictatorial system and it is far better than a one-man rule situation.

We think that democracy can change a lot of things, but we're being fooled, because democracy is not the election. We've been taught that democracy is having elections. And it isn't. Elections are the most horrendous aspect of democracy. It's the most mundane, trivial, disappointing, dirty aspect.

If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal.

I kinda halfway paid attention to politics during my early years, but the older you get, the more you realize it's very important to pay attention to who gets elected. They can ruin the country.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

When push comes to shove, people vote alone.

Our democracy, our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.

The view that we hold in Iraq now is this - that democracy is associated with elections. I believe that elections are possible.

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.

As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.

Mexico has proven by now that it's a strong electoral democracy. Now we have to build a democracy that produces better results; if not, then you get a democracy of disenchantment.

I'm tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn't work. Of course it doesn't work. We are supposed to work it.

We express our values through politics—through the officials we elect.

I shall not vote because I do not aspire to advise my sovereign on the choice of her servants.

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.

Democracy has to deliver. It is not enough for people to vote. They must also eat.

It is the healthiest thing in a democracy when the people who are elected exert power.