Democratic Power Quotes

Technology and social media have brought power back to the people.

The masses are our masters; and for every one who looks facts in the face his existence has become dependent on them, so that the thought of them must control his doings, his cares, and his duties.

I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.

There are those who believe that power is up above, and they don't notice that it's actually in the hearts of the great masses.

Hillary Clinton's loss has exposed the lack of Democratic power in this country at all levels.

In England pensions used to be given to aristocrats, because aristocrats had political influence, in order to corrupt them. Here pensions are given to the great democratic mass, because they have political power, to corrupt them.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

Taming the financial markets and winning back democratic control over them is the central condition for creating a new social balance in Germany and Europe.

Power is the sum total of the wills of the mass, transfered by express or tactic agreement to rulers chosen by the masses.

Once the Afghan people vote and they choose their President with direct, secret ballot from all over the country, there will be a lot of difference in this country and a lot of legitimate power to flow with implementation.

Democratic power is the only voice most citizens have.

People must learn more and more that the strength of this country is the democratic power of the trade union movement.

I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who's too big to fail.

World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.

Democracy, once unleashed, is a pretty powerful force.

With us, the people of India, rests the real power to decide our collective future.

The confidence with which a Sovereign is invested, is solid only when it is sanctioned by the suffrages of the people, who clothed him with the supreme magistracy.

This power of democracy is a matter of pride for our country, something which we must always cherish, preserve and further strengthen.

Well, I didn't want to have the reminder sort of in the sky, so that people would forever look at it. I wanted to have - really to create a city from the bottom up. From that foundation, which held, from the democratic power of what the site really is.

The reason that Google was such a success is because they were the first ones to take advantage of the self-organizing properties of the web. It's in ecological sustainability. It's in the developmental power of entrepreneurship, the ethical power of democracy.

A major danger for us Europeans: We must demonstrate that those who have this view of us are mistaken, that we can come to agreement, that we as a community of democratic and free nations are economically successful and are gaining political influence. To do so, we must learn to project our power.

Laborers have every disposition to work above the slave, and if there were opportunity would be glad to do so, but without such opportunity they come into competition with him… Already there is disposition to exclude him [the slave] from the trades, from public works, from drays [land transportation of goods], and the tables of hotels; he is even now excluded to a great extent. And when more laborers shall come in greater numbers to the South, they will still more increase the tendency to exclusion; they will question the right of masters to employ their slaves in any works that they may wish for; they will invoke the aid of legislation; they will use the elective franchise to that end; they may acquire the power to determine municipal elections; they will inexorably use it; and thus the town of Charleston, at the very heart of slavery, may become a fortress of democratic power against it.

I am interested in power, too, but power for you, the people, not power for bureaucrats and politicians and officeholders and all the like.

That's what's great about Howard Zinn. Here's a guy who says, "Look, democracy doesn't come from above - it comes from below." The only way change will ever happen is if we speak up, and we have to know that it actually has an impact. Because we have a lot more power than we think we do, I think.

The public, therefore, among a democratic people, has a singular power, which aristocratic nations cannot conceive; for it does not persuade others to its beliefs, but it imposes them and makes them permeate the thinking of everyone by a sort of enormous pressure of the mind of all upon the individual intelligence.