democratic engagement Quotes

Where everyman is participator in the government of affairs, not merely at an election one day in the year but everyday, he will let the heart be torn out of his body sooner than his power be wrested from him by a Caesar or a Bonaparte.

Bernie Sanders brought millions of people into the political process.

The participation in European elections was always not very exciting. People are very interested in European issues, but they don't see the person who is representing Europe.

India's democracy where over 1 billion people have a voice in deciding their future is a world example of how governance can incorporate diversity into a movement for inclusive growth. New modes of democratic engagement, especially through using e-governance are allowing greater access to fundamental rights for all our people.

Crucially, I'd like to thank Labour party members up and down the country for sticking with us. For their active citizenship, their willingness to engage in our democracy, and for being there at the cutting edge of making our democracy work.

The reality is, our problem isn't that more people are voting Republican than Democrat - our problem is most people who would vote Democrat aren't voting.

Should people be mere "interested spectators of action," not "participants," restricted to lending their weight periodically to one or another sector of the "responsible men," as advocates of "manufacture of consent" have recommended? Or should their rights transcend these highly restricted bounds?

It seems to me that actual democracy is where all of us get to participate and it's not just a sort of a blunt little dry hump in a ballot box, but an actual penetrative process.

African-American women are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, and we need to do more to make sure that we engage them, that we don't take them for granted. We need to be there. And again, I keep thinking about that woman I met in Detroit shortly after my election, who said, "You've got to stop showing up every fourth October and telling me that you care."

When we vote we participate in the construction of a context.

One of the things I really want is for people to feel the civic responsibility, and not just refuse to vote out of protest.

I think the right way to do this is just to step up and do it, so I actually think we'll see more of that over the next coming weeks, because I think they'll say, "We'd like to be good for business and quiet on politics, but this is too urgent, it is too much of a key crisis in who we are going to become as Americans. We can risk too much, and so we have to step forward." And I think you will see more and more people stepping forward, like Howard Schultz, Steve Case and other folks, in order to try to make a difference in this [Donald Trump] election.

In the age of the internet, with all of its problems, over time, the very fact that individuals can join the conversation creates the opportunity for the emergence of - for the re-emergence of a genuine conversation of democracy.

People who don't vote have no call on political leaders!

Allowing young people to vote for the first time while they are still at school would allow them to engage with the political process, as well as the relevant issues, with the support of teachers to help them make informed choices.

The Unheavenly Chorus is the definitive study of participatory inequality in America. Marshaling prodigious evidence, the authors show how money not only buys influence directly but also affects associations that are supposed to be democratic antidotes to concentrated wealth. A monumental achievement of careful scholarship, this book offers real knowledge of how politics actually operates.

I've voted in every election - not always for the same political party and never with any degree of enthusiasm.

If everybody voted, then it would completely change the political map in this country.

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.

We need a very progressive and strong agenda to bring people into the political process because I worry very much about the future of the American democracy where so many people are giving up.

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.

We have been deformed by educational and religious institutions that treat us as members of an audience instead of actors in a drama, so we become adults who treat democracy as a spectator sport.

The goal is to talk about the issues that are happening in the USA with the ultimate goal of making change. Not just some rebellious act that we're trying to have against our country.

In modern states, the citizen is politically impotent. A citizen, it is true, may complain, make suggestions, or cause disruptions, but in the ancient world these were privileges that belonged to any slave.

Calling out people for not voting, what experts term 'public shaming,' can prod someone to cast a ballot.