Democratic Debate Quotes

No matter how convinced we are that someone is nasty, evil or just plain criminal, if they have not been convicted of any crime and support views that are upheld and defended by many law-abiding citizens, the only way to tackle them is through democratic debate.

Before the internet, a journalist would write an article about a company that the company felt was unfair and missed a point. All they could do was write a letter to the editor and wait, and maybe a week later it would be printed, or not. Now, they can go to medium.com and immediately publish a long rebuttal, saying the journalist forgot this and did not consider that, the analyst is wrong here. Everybody pulls that immediately into the debate. So it is a much more democratic field for ideas.

One big reason liberals come across as intolerant of ordinary Americans today is their preference for court decisions and regulatory mandates over democratically debated and approved legislation. This preference for working around the people’s elected representatives feeds all-or-nothing outcomes that are devoid of the accommodations and compromises which almost always feature in any legislative solution. It is these accommodations and compromises, moreover, that help make the outcome acceptable even to the losing side.

You look at that Democratic debate. I had to laugh at what I saw Barack Obama do. I mean, in one week, he went from saying he is going to sit down for tea with our enemies, but then he's going to bomb our allies. I mean, he's gone from Jane Fonda to Dr. Strangelove in one week.

I think integration in Norway is, by all standards, going relatively well. People are working, taking education, learning the language. But, yes, it is a challenge. And democracy and democratic debate has to be open to take that debate openly and not push questions aside.

During the Democratic presidential debate Howard Dean started off by apologizing to the crowd for having a cold. Then John Kerry apologized for once having a cold while serving his country in Vietnam.

My work shows how important it is that independent researchers should have access to data so that government statistics can be checked and so that the democratic debate within India can be informed by the different interpretations of different scholars.

The idea that Parliament somehow wasn't going to be able to discuss, debate, question issues around (Brexit) was frankly completely wrong.

There is nothing wrong with being a Marxist. Their point of view is essential to a democratic debate.

Unlike every other nation in the world, the United States defines itself as a hypothesis and constitutes itself as an argument.

One needs to know what the hierarchy of values are from which one takes inspiration, and in a democratic society this is the subject of continuous democratic debate.

At various periods in American history, people get pretty rambunctious when it comes to our democratic debate.

People on left have to better understand what are the benefits of inequality, and people on right have to understand better what the dangers are... It has to become properly hardwired into the American democratic debate in a way that it hasn't really been.

Al Jazeera aired a new tape of Osama bin Laden. It was the usual stuff, he called Bush evil, the Great Satan, called him a war monger. Basically, the same thing you heard at last night's Democratic debate.

I would love to see a revival of what we had against the war in the '60s - we could do these teach-ins on the internet, live and split screen, and have real in-depth debate between people that are on the "other" side of issues - nuclear, gun control, whatever. We could really be having a much more democratically involved and exciting debate with people emailing their questions and having a virtual town meeting.

Political institutions are fair game in political debates in a democracy. Nothing is more fair game, in fact, than political matters of public concern.

Nations need to understand their own strengths and weaknesses, and India's tradition of dissent and democratic debate is a positive aspect.

Freedom to speak... can be maintained only by promoting debate.

I can't believe that Hillary Clinton wants the world to think that whenever she gets into political trouble, she's going to have her husband come roaring about, breaking furniture, sucking up oxygen, spewing carbon dioxide. My impression is that she's strong enough to defend herself - she certainly showed that in the recent Democratic debate. But apparently she's not strong enough to control Mr. Bill. And if that's the case, any sane voter would have to think twice before enabling this sort of circus act in the White House.

The weakness in a model in which one assumes that the electorate gets what it needs from Bill Clinton is that our system doesn't institutionalize the oppositional voice, and one needs to be able to hear the exchange of the debate in order to create an informed electorate.

We are Americans, We have the right to participate and debate any administration.

Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open and that...may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.

To avoid the trap of Europe fragmenting on the economy, security, and identity, we have to return to the original promises of the European project: peace, prosperity and freedom. We should have a real, adult, democratic debate about the Europe we want.

It is the BJP's duty to criticise and oppose me. I have no problem with that.

I am dead against trying to keep religious conservatives out of the political debate. The tactic of exclusion is self-defeating.