democracies quotes

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

-James Fenimore Cooper
  The American Democrat,'On the Disadvantages of Democracy'.

Our whole history inclines us towards the democratic powers.Our renaissance is a logical link between us and the democracies of the west.

-Toma  s Garrigue Masaryk
  Inaugural address, 23 Dec.

Glorious deeds are not embraced by democracies, least of all by merchants, who, being by their nature intent on profit, loathe those splendid things that cannot be achieved without expense.

-Pius II real name Enea Silvio de Piccolomini
  Commentaries. Quoted inJ H Plumb (ed) The Horizon Book of the Renaissance (1961, new edn by Penguin,1982).

Democracies must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijackers of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend.

- Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
  Speech to theAmerican BarAssociation meeting in London, referring in particular to increasing British press coverage of IRA terrorist activities,15 Jul.