Democracy is not a spectator sport. It requires active participation from all citizens. — Alexei Navalny
Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen. — John F. Kennedy
This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we're not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there. — George Takei
Democracy means far more than the right to vote every five years. It means the right to participate in every aspect of national and community life. The people must believe that they can take part. — Michael Manley
In the final analysis it doesn't really matter what the political system is...We don't need perfect political systems; we need perfect participation. — Cesar Chavez
Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
Voting is easy and marginally useful, but it is a poor substitute for democracy, which requires direct action by concerned citizens. — Howard Zinn
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. — Plato
Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it's something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles. — Abbie Hoffman
Full democracy requires the full participation of women. Your voices are vital. The word 'vital' means necessary for life. A democracy, to be fully alive, must include all its citizens. — Swanee Hunt
Politics begins when you stop just making political commentary and start actually influencing the situation. — Alexei Navalny
Politics is pervasive. Everything is political and the choice to be "apolitical" is usually just an endorsement of the status quo and the unexamined life. — Rebecca Solnit
I believe that voting is the first act of building a community as well as building a country. — John Ensign
It is not enough to profess faith in the democratic process; we must do something about it. — Ella T. Grasso
Short Political Participation Quotes
To vote is like the payment of a debt, a duty never to be neglected, if its performance is possible. — Rutherford B. Hayes
Appeal must be to an informed, civically militant electorate. — Felix Frankfurter
An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy. — Thomas Jefferson
Citizenship is the chance to make a difference to the place where you belong. — Charles Handy
Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity. — Naomi Klein
Today's political climate does not allow the luxury of apathy. — Trent Reznor
The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
What Is Political Participation Quotes
Look at what the Omar of Qatar is doing, for example - the King of Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain. There are reform movements taking place, efforts to broaden the political participation of the populations of the region. — Frank Carlucci
In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or a politics of hope? — Barack Obama
The only way change happens is when people become more significantly involved in the political process. We have to increase voter turnout and citizen participation so that people know what's going on and demand a government that works for everybody and not just the one percent. — Bernie Sanders
Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem is to stop participating in the problem.
Man's Chief purpose is the creation and preservation of values; that is what gives meaning to our civilization, and the participation in this is what gives significance, ultimately, to the individual human life. — Lewis Mumford
It never hurts to be involved in any political or activist organization. I can never see how participation would be a bad thing. The key is being true to what you participate with and who. — John Cusack
Political Involvement Quotes
The point is change can come about, but it only comes about when millions of people are actively involved in political struggle, the billionaires may have the money, but we have the people. — Bernie Sanders
Now is the time to alter our government. Now is the time to stop the movement toward oligarchy. Now is the time to create a government which represents all Americans and not just the 1%... No more excuses. We must all become involved in the political process. — Bernie Sanders
The whole country wants civility. Why don't we have it? It doesn't cost anything. No federal funding, no legislation is involved. One answer is the unwillingness to restrain oneself. Everybody wants other people to be polite to them, but they want the freedom of not having to be polite to others. — Judith Martin
When words are both true and kind they can change the world.
Political extremism involves two prime ingredients: an excessively simple diagnosis of the world's ills, and a conviction that there are identifiable villains back of it all. — John W. Gardner
The Fate of good men who refuse to become involved in politics is to be ruled by evil men. — Edmund Burke
State intervention in economic production arises only when private initiative is lacking or insufficient, or when the political interests of the State are involved. This intervention may take the form of control, assistance or direct management. — Benito Mussolini
Conflict cannot survive without your participation.
Macroeconomic policy can never be devoid of politics: it involves fundamental trade-offs and affects different groups differently. — Joseph Stiglitz
Political campaigns are designedly made into emotional orgies which endeavor to distract attention from the real issues involved, and they actually paralyze what slight powers of cerebration man can normally muster. — James Harvey Robinson
There is no difference between religion and politics. Both involve lies and fanatical beliefs that generaly defy logic... Just like rock climbing. — David Schuller
Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live...They won't become involved in economic or political change until something brings the seriousness of the situation home to them. — Shirley Chisholm
Political Engagement Quotes
Civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. — Thomas Ehrlich
Here is the prime condition of success: Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged. Having begun on one line, resolve to fight it out on that line, to lead in it, adopt every improvement, have the best machinery, and know the most about it. — Andrew Carnegie
Our ability to effectively engage China and the Arab world rests on shared economic and political interests and mutual understanding. — Rick Larsen
Be gentle with yourself, you're doing the best you can.
Concentrate your energy, thought and capital exclusively upon the business in which you are engaged... 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket' is all wrong. I tell you 'put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch that basket.' — Andrew Carnegie
Any clear-thinking person should be able to engage in nuanced thinking when it comes to complex political positions. — Gad Saad
Treat everyone with politeness and kindness, not because they are nice, but because you are.
Love and politics are the two great figures of social engagement. Politics is enthusiasm with a collective; with love, two people. So love is the minimal form of communism. — Alain Badiou
I am ready to have dialogue with the concerned parties once the nation is calm and the political temperatures are lowered enough for constructive and productive engagement. — Mwai Kibaki
When it comes to Chinese food I have always operated under the policy that the less known about the preparation the better. A wise diner who is invited to visit the kitchen replies by saying, as politely as possible, that he has a pressing engagement elsewhere. — Calvin Trillin
A better way to mutual respect is to engage directly with the moral convictions citizens bring to public life, rather than to require that people leave their deepest moral convictions outside politics before they enter. — Michael Sandel
Political Rights Quotes
If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
A Bill of Rights that means what the majority wants it to mean is worthless. — Antonin Scalia
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. — Hermann Goring
It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong. — Voltaire
All talk on Islamic States is just an empty dream. No man in his right sense would accept a nation which bases its political administration on religion, and in a country like Malaysia with its multiracial and multireligious people, there is no room for an Islamic State. — Tunku Abdul Rahman
We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.
When plunder becomes a way of life, men create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it. — Frederic Bastiat
Republican is fine, if your a millionaire. Democrats is fair, if all you own is what you wear. Neither of them's really right, cause neither of them care. — Frank Zappa
It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom. — Lucy Burns
I had a right to my own political opinions. I am a Southern woman, born with Revolutionary blood in my veins. Freedom of speech and of thought were my birthright, guaranteed, signed and sealed by the blood of our fathers. — Rose O'Neal Greenhow
Political Education Quotes
Without patriotic political education, a soldier is only a potential criminal. — Thomas Sankara
What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Pericles
Education remains the key to both economic and political empowerment. — Barbara Jordan
Be the person your dog thinks you are.
The Revolution won't happen with guns, rather it will happen incrementally, year by year, generation by generation. We will gradually infiltrate their educational institutions and their political offices, transforming them slowly into Marxist entities as we move towards universal egalitarianism. — Max Horkheimer
Poverty is multidimensional. It extends beyond money incomes to education, health care, political participation and advancement of one's own culture and social organisation. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee
From education to employment, housing to trust in the police, politicians from all parties must understand the different issues affecting individual communities. — Rishi Sunak
The stronger you become, the gentler you will be.
Activists need to educate themselves about the power of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, invented in 2009, and use crypto to leverage the success of their independent media gains to tip the balance of power away from the troika in ways that could never happen by backing a political candidate. — Max Keiser
A large part of the present anxiety to improve the education of girls and women is also due to the conviction that the political disabilities of women will not be maintained. — Millicent Fawcett
You can rule ignorance; you can manipulate the illiterate; you can do whatever you want when a people are uneducated, so that goes in line with corrupt business and corrupt politics. — will.i.am
At the bottom of education, at the bottom of politics, even at the bottom of religion, there must be for our race economic independence. — Booker T. Washington
Political Election Quotes
Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters. — Abraham Lincoln
If we would learn what the human race really is at bottom, we need only observe it in election times. — Mark Twain
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it. — Harry S Truman
Being polite is so rare these days, thats its often confused with flirting.
A guy named Adolf Hitler won an election in 1932 ... and 50 million people died as a result ... what I learned as a little kid is that politics is, in fact, very important. — Bernie Sanders
The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election. — Gerald R. Ford
A President needs political understanding to run the government, but he may be elected without it. — Harry S. Truman
Treat everyone with politeness, even those who are rude to you - not because they are nice, ut because you are.
No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems. They are trying to solve their own problems - of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two. Whatever is number three is far behind. — Thomas Sowell
We're not going to have the America that we want until we elect leaders who are going to tell the truth - not most days, but every day. — Ann Richards
It is not in the nature of politics that the best men should be elected. The best men do not want to govern their fellowmen. — George Macdonald
Any politician who can be elected only by turning Americans against other Americans is too dangerous to be elected. — Thomas Sowell
Political Activism Quotes
So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men. — Voltaire
My early years as a political activist were dominated by the poll tax. — Nicola Sturgeon
Taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor. Seizing the results of someone's labor is equivalent to seizing hours from him and directing him to carry on various activities. — Robert Nozick
Social etiquette dictates that when in mixed company, one should avoid discussing politics and religion. As someone who is quite active on various social portals, I can attest to the visceral emotions that are triggered when these topics are broached! — Gad Saad
To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. — Barack Obama
A man of active and resilient mind outwears his friendships just as certainly as he outwears his love affairs, his politics and his epistemology. — H. L. Mencken
One of the chief symptoms of every revolution is the sharp and sudden increase in the number of ordinary people who take an active, independent and forceful interest in politics. — Vladimir Lenin
I’m not a politician. I don’t want to be a politician, because politicians do what is politically expedient. I want to do what’s right. — Benjamin Carson
Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was. — James Carriger Paine
Political Parties Quotes
There is nothing I dread so much as the division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our constitution. — John Adams
The Republican and Democratic parties, or, to be more exact, the Republican-Democratic party, represent the capitalist class in the class struggle. They are the political wings of the capitalist system and such differences as arise between them relate to spoils and not to principles. — Eugene V. Debs
All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party. — Mao Zedong
The press must grow day in and day out - it is our Party's sharpest and most powerful weapon. — Joseph Stalin
I think the Republican party should be placed in drydock and have the barnacles scraped off its bottom. — Tallulah Bankhead
I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear. — Margaret Chase Smith
The great issues facing us today are not Republican issues or Democratic issues. The political parties can debate the means, but both parties must embrace the end objective, which is to make America great again. — Lee Iacocca
If you begin to consider yourself solely responsible to a political party, you're half-way to a dictatorship. — Clement Attlee
Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life-rafts. — Eugene McCarthy
No one party can fool all of the people all of the time; that's why we have two parties — Bob Hope
Participatory Democracy Quotes
What should be targeted is a concept of organic, and not just mechanic, democracy that preserves the rule of law, separation of powers, and that is participatory and pluralistic. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan
In other words, the bar should be maintained at the level of a pluralistic and participatory democracy. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan
I'm sometimes impatient with young people who demonstrate at my meetings and who don't want an argument, but who just want to go on television as having been there and made a fuss. This doesn't mean I don't believe in participatory democracy. — Pierre Trudeau
The ideals of participatory democracy are represented through suppleness rather than rigidity. — Liz Diller
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. — Danny Glover
Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor. — Cory Booker
I'm impatient not with the House of Commons as an institution, but with the way in which it is operated. This doesn't prove I don't believe in participatory democracy. — Pierre Trudeau
Many people are alienated by faceless bureaucracy and what they see as an erosion of participatory democracy. Consequently, there has been a revival of interest in charitable service. — Frank Prochaska
A messy participatory process is representative democracy at its best. — Mark McKinnon
Political Action Quotes
Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions. Liberty and responsibility are inseparable. — Friedrich August von Hayek
Military action without politics is like a tree without a root. — Ho Chi Minh
Ideas in a void have never appealed to me; action must follow thought or political life is meaningless. — Oswald Mosley
Hollywood is in control of politics and has imported their action-filled movie scripts into the real world. — Kim Dotcom
The Union of the Russian People helped invent a new style of right-wing politics – novel not just for Russia but for most of the world – a politics in a new key oriented toward the masses, public spaces, and direct action, a fascism avant la lettre. — Stephen Kotkin
Books ARE a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind. — Toni Morrison
The measure of the wealth of a nation is indicated by the measure of its protection of its industry; the measure of the poverty of a nation is marked by the degree in which it neglects and abandons the care of its own industry, leaving it exposed to the action of foreign powers. — Henry Clay
Middle-class societies don't emerge automatically as an economy matures, they have to be CREATED through political action. — Paul Krugman
The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy. — Carl Schmitt
Every clique is a refuge for incompetence. It fosters corruption and disloyalty, it begets cowardice, and consequently is a burden upon and a drawback to the progress of the country. Its instincts and actions are those of the pack. — Soong May-ling
Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal. — Frederic Bastiat
People don't want to believe they have to speak like Obama or Clinton to participate meaningfully in politics, because most of us don't speak like Obama or Clinton. — James David Vance
When we get a chance to take part in elections, I am ready to fight for leading positions, including in the presidential vote. — Alexei Navalny
I have met with political leaders, legislators, and diplomats, seeking the next steps to press in reducing and eliminating the nuclear threat in this century. I have participated in public coalitions developing programmes for action to combat the global rash of small arms. All are trying and making a difference. — Michael Douglas
Increased interest and participation by labor in the affairs of government should make for economic and political stability in the future. Labor has a constitutional and statutory right to participate. — John L. Lewis
Maybe democrats will eventually turn on Obamacare when they realize you might need a photo I.D. to participate in the program. — Dennis Miller
As in Machiavelli, the bearing of arms is the essential medium through which the individual asserts both his social power and his participation in politics as a responsible moral being; but the possession of land in nondependent tenure is now the material basis for bearing of arms. — J. G. A. Pocock
Similarly, gender-equality, supremacy of law, political participation, civil society, and transparency are among the indispensable elements that are the imperatives of democratization. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan
I believe that nothing has been more wholesome for America, for our government, for our politics, than the increased participation of women. — Nancy Pelosi
I ran because I became convinced after King was shot and killed, and Martin Luther King was one of the great heroes of my life, that politics is not perfect but it's the best available nonviolent means of changing how we live. If we don't like how we live, we can participate in the perfect most revolutionary act in a democracy, it's called voting. — Maynard Jackson
Nothing so strongly impels a man to regard the interest of his constituents, as the certainty of returning to the general mass of the people, from whence he was taken, where he must participate in their burdens. — George Mason
I think I'm one of the most patriotic people that I've ever encountered in America. I consider myself a bedrock patriot. I participate very actively in local politics, because my voice might be worthwhile. I participate in a meaningful way - not by donations; I work at it. — Hunter S. Thompson
Of course, I am the first democratically elected woman president in Africa, and that raises a lot of expectations. Because I represent the aspirations of women all over Africa, I must succeed for them. I must keep the door open for women's participation in politics at the highest level. That is both humbling and exciting. — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
The Crown Prince has said he needs to broaden political participation in the governing of Saudi Arabia. — Frank Carlucci
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was more politically oriented. Part and parcel of the initial SNCC efforts was to not only go in for voter registration, but for political participation. — Ella Baker
The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation. — Jens Stoltenberg
Without glasnost there is not, and there cannot be, democratism, the political creativity of the masses and their participation in management. — Mikhail Gorbachev
Well, I certainly hope the Democrats participate. I continue to think that some things transcend politics like the murder of four of our fellow citizens and whether or not you trust government. That is not a red or blue issue. That is an American issue. As for whether or not they boycott, I hope they don't. — Trey Gowdy
... we believe in the vocation of communion and participation of our people, who day to day awaken to their political conscience and express their desire for change and profound democratization of society. A change based on justice, built with love, and which will bring us the most anxiously desired fruits of peace. — Adolfo Perez Esquivel
I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil. — Albert Einstein
...the life which is best for men, both separately, as individuals, and in the mass, as states, is the life which has virtue sufficiently supported by material resources to facilitate participation in the actions that virtue calls for. — Aristotle
I never participated in far-reaching political decisions, since I never belonged to the circle of the closest associates of Adolf Hitler, neither was I consulted by Adolf Hitler on general political questions, nor did I ever take part in conferences about such problems. — Hans Frank
Politics is a contest among people of diverse backgrounds and philosophies, advocating different solutions to common problems. The system only works when principled, energetic people participate. — Bob Ehrlich
When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action. — Paul Wellstone
I think e-mail petitions are an illusion. It gives people the illusion that they're participating in some meaningful political action. — Howard Rheingold
People have to be atomized and segregated and alone. They're not supposed to organize, because then they might be something beyond spectators of action. They might actually be participants if many people with limited resources could get together to enter the political arena. That's really threatening. — Noam Chomsky
The elections are the greatest symbol of participation and political reform. — Mohammad Khatami
The career of politics grants a feeling of power. The knowledge of influencing men, of participating in power over them, and above all, the feeling of holding in one's hands a nerve fiber of historically important events can elevate the professional politician above everyday routine even when he is placed in formally modest positions. — Max Weber
The language we share is at the core of our identity as citizens, and our ticket to full participation in American political life. We can speak any language we want at the dinner table, but English is the language of public discourse, or the marketplace and of the voting booth. — S. I. Hayakawa
Just as important, we need a new dedication to opening avenues for employee participation and motivation through profit-sharing and innovative programs of job enrichment. — Charles H. Percy
I had always been interested in politics. I had assumed - for two reasons, being Jewish and being gay back in the late '50s, early '60s - that I would never be elected or anything, but I would participate as an activist. — Barney Frank
Work can be undertaken to create an authentic independent political party, a real party, based on popular participation from the ground up, not a top-down candidate producing organization like the two official parties, working from school boards to state legislatures and beyond. Not easy in the regressive U.S. political system, but not impossible. — Noam Chomsky
Women in Jordan are participating in all aspects of civil as well as political life - as female judges, parliamentarians, businesswomen. And the evolution will continue. This is not something that happens overnight. — Queen Rania of Jordan
Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner, bypassed the debate before the Iowa caucuses because he objected to the participation of moderator Megyn Kelly as well a press release defending her.Beyond the Trump tantrum, we wondered if this had something bigger to say about the state of the media and politics and how politics is practiced today. — Michel Martin
You have educate the masses to exactly what their tax dollars are going to pay for. I think once people educate themselves and open up their minds to understand that on that really basic
level, then you'll have some type of change in the way that Americans associate themselves and participate in their own political process. — Lupe Fiasco
We wanted to hear from viewers about why they watch or participate in call-ins on C-SPAN, ... Viewers of all ages and walks of life wrote to us, including actresses, stand-up comics, parents and students. What's clear after reading the entries is the impact that call-ins have had on the political conversation on the network. — Brian Lamb
If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none. — Thomas Jefferson
People like to see honest persons. So I certainly will advise many young people who want to participate in politics, honesty is the best policy. — Ma Ying-jeou
We can and must move U.S. politics forward by means of committed participation. — Paul Wellstone
In Conclusion
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