20 Democracy Quotes Voters Should Contemplate Before the 2020 Election

As we are approaching the primaries for the 2020 election, we’ve put together a list of quotes about democracy for voters to think about as they consider who and what to vote for. Keep in mind that all of these quotes had a context in a time and place in our history, and so it is useful to consider why these quotes are significant. Some of these are frequently used and probably well known. Others of these quotes are more recent.

1. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead

2. “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” ― Theodore Roosevelt

3. “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt

4. “I swear to the Lord, I still can’t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.” — Langston Hughes

5. “We women of America tell you that America is not a democracy. Twenty million women are denied the right to vote.” — Alice Paul

6. “The objective I propose is quite simple to state: to foster the infrastructure of democracy — the system of a free press, unions, political parties, universities — which allows a people to choose their own way to develop their own culture, to reconcile their own differences through peaceful means.” — Ronald Reagan

7. “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” — Alexis de Tocqueville

8. “Our democracy is designed to speak truth to power.” — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

9. “Elections remind us not only of the rights but the responsibilities of citizenship in a democracy.” –Robert Kennedy

10. “If there was one decision I would overrule, it would be ‘Citizens United.’ I think the notion that we have all the democracy that money can buy strays so far from what our democracy is supposed to be.” — Ruth Bader Ginsburg

11. “A free America… means just this: individual freedom for all, rich or poor, or else this system of government we call democracy is only an expedient to enslave man to the machine and make him like it.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

12. “Reading and writing, like everything else, improve with practice. And, of course, if there are no young readers and writers, there will shortly be no older ones. Literacy will be dead, and democracy — which many believe goes hand in hand with it — will be dead as well.” — Margaret Atwood

13. “If we want to preserve the foundation of our democracy, it’s vital that we find common ground that allows us to work for the greater good of this nation. This does not mean giving up our values. This does not mean swallowing a bitter compromise.” — Tulsi Gabbard

14. “While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.” — Madeleine Albright

15. “If you want to preserve democracy as we know it, you have to have a free and many times adversarial press. And without it, I am afraid that we would lose so much of our individual liberties over time. That’s how dictators get started.” — John McCain

16. “Where I think historians can help preserve and actually restore democracy is to remind us of how we got it.” — Stacey Abrams

17. “To get back to the kind of shared prosperity and upward mobility we once considered normal will require another era of fundamental reform, of both our economy and our democracy.” — Robert Reich

18. “Campaign ads are the backbone of American democracy if American democracy suffered a gigantic spinal injury.” — John Oliver

19. “There is no reason that billionaires should crowd us out from our democracy.” — Martin O’Malley

20. “The only part of my mother’s experience that still gets to me is the way she and people like her were looked down upon for asking America to be America, for asking for full and equal participation in our democracy.” — Julian Castro