"Democracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was levity. We expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It is time we began to offer our apologies to America and democracy. The result of reading endless various American newspapers and articles, of following the actions of the American Government, of talking to representative Americans, is to realize the existence of a very clear, strong national mentality, ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... pages present the substance of a course of twelve lectures on "Democracy and Social Ethics" which have been delivered at various colleges and university ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... memorized in the primary schools. The child begins his education with Ariel and the fairies, and until his schooling is completed is kept in almost daily intercourse with the poetry and persons of the dramas. Homer was not better known in Athens. In a democracy still young and widely separated from older nations and cultures, Shakespeare has become one of the links that bind the American public not only to the common inheritances of the English-speaking races, but to the traditional culture ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... fine and thoughtful leaders of society could easily establish the new order of things. In an aristocratic country, where labor is the badge of caste, it would be difficult to make it honorable. In a democracy like our own, it is the most contemptible snobbishness which frowns on the honest ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... smooth things. All sorts of people (except the working sort) frequent his receptions—the fashionable classes, who are far more loyal to England for the most part than the English themselves, their fringe, and then the wealthier of the tradespeople. It is proven every day that a democracy is the happiest hunting ground for a man with a title. The very rarity of the distinction makes it more precious to those who value it, and the titled governors of one of our great colonies occupies a position which is vastly higher in public ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... (Misc. Works, i. 304), describing in 1789 the honestest members of the French Assembly, calls them 'a set of wild visionaries, like our Dr. Price, who gravely debate, and dream about the establishment of a pure and perfect democracy of five and twenty millions, the virtues of the golden age, and the primitive rights and equality of mankind.' Admiration of Price made Samuel Rogers, when a boy, wish to be a preacher. 'I thought there was nothing on ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... Coarseness—our Anglo Saxon peculiarity—is due to temperamental insensitiveness. Outrageous grossness—with its ironical, beautiful blasphemy against the great mother's amazing tricks—is an intellectual and spiritual thing, worthy of all noble souls. The one is the rank breath of a bourgeois democracy, the other is the free laughter of civilised intelligences through ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... Hare's idea as I was, and he said that if I would write a pamphlet he would pay for the printing of 1,000 copies, to be sent to all the members of Parliament and other leading people in city and country. I called my pamphlet "A Plea for Pure Democracy," and when writing it I felt the democratic strength of the position as I had not felt it in reading Hare's own book. It cost my brother 15 pounds, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... Avenue, into which finally I swung after I had crossed Rock Bridge, the more I realized that perhaps this big game was worth playing in detail and without quibble as the master mind should dictate. As he was servant of a purpose, of an ideal of triumphant democracy, why should not I also serve in a ...
— 54-40 or Fight • Emerson Hough
... unknown to us. We knew what each nation was engaged in doing, and we were able to estimate, with some measure of assurance, what it would continue doing. Next, the mass of the people had gained a potent voice in the management of affairs. Democracy was coming to the throne, if it had not ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... of this treason are lost to us; it is one of the darkest passages of Athenian history. From scattered and solitary references we can learn, however, that for a time it threatened the democracy ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... admitted to social intercourse with the family of the owner. As Archie stole by, the voices from the veranda sounded remote as from another world. An aristocrat by birth and training, he found here a concrete lesson in democracy that disturbed him. The world was not all club corners and week-end parties. For a few hours at least he was earning his bread by the sweat of his face—a marvelous experience—and feeling very lonesome indeed at the end of ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... was conscious, too, of a new feeling, and all were bound to recognize it; the sense of dependency upon the Old World in certain matters which applied to the mental state rather than anything material was almost gone; the democracy had grown more democratic and the republic was more republican; within the nation itself the West was taking a greater prominence, and the East did not begrudge it. It was felt by everybody in either party ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... that social distinctions were more seriously regarded in England than the United States. She concluded if ever the moment were propitious to inquire of Martha if the Girl Guides represented an effort toward real Democracy in the sense the American Girl Scouts trusted that they represented the ...
— The Girl Scouts in Beechwood Forest • Margaret Vandercook
... excuse the crime of war by attaching ludicrous ideals and purposes to its result. Thus every war is to its non-combatants a holy war. And we get a swivel-chair collection of nincompoops raving weirdly, as the casualty lists pour in, of humanity and democracy. It hasn't come ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... the school, as we know it, is a very recent institution. Nation after nation has arisen, reached its zenith, declined, and passed away without dreaming of such a thing as universal education. With the growth of democracy, particularly during the Reformation, the ideal of education as the birthright of every child became well defined and during the years that have intervened, this ideal ...
— Parent and Child Vol. III., Child Study and Training • Mosiah Hall
... and extensive prerogatives are placed in the hands of an hereditary monarch, the executive department is very justly regarded as the source of danger, and watched with all the jealousy which a zeal for liberty ought to inspire. In a democracy, where a multitude of people exercise in person the legislative functions, and are continually exposed, by their incapacity for regular deliberation and concerted measures, to the ambitious intrigues of their executive magistrates, tyranny may well be apprehended, on some favorable ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... incorrectly,) declared for Protection in the campaign of 1856. His taking courage from so insignificant a fact as any of these gentlemen declaring for any serviceable doctrine in a campaign shows Mr. Ormsby to be by no means intimately acquainted with Massachusetts Democracy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... were coming up from the bottom, and who had no social hopes whatsoever. There were many such. If through luck and effort he became sufficiently powerful financially he might then hope to dictate to society. Individualistic and even anarchistic in character, and without a shred of true democracy, yet temperamentally he was in sympathy with the mass more than he was with the class, and he understood the mass better. Perhaps this, in a way, will explain his desire to connect himself with a personality so naive and strange as Peter Laughlin. He had annexed him as a surgeon ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... is quoted as the type of a successful and beneficent tyrant held in honour by all posterity; Thrasybulus as a consistent advocate and successful champion of democracy.] ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... perfectly true, as has been argued by more than one honourable member in this debate, that there is a contest going on in the world, between the spirit of unlimited monarchy, and the spirit of unlimited democracy. Between these two spirits, it may be said that strife is either openly in action or covertly at work, throughout the greater portion of Europe. It is true, as has also been argued, that in no former period in history is there so close a resemblance to the present, as in that of the Reformation. ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... wonderful system this old British system, George. It's staid and stable and yet it has a place for new men. We come up and take our places. It's almost expected. We take a hand. That's where our Democracy differs from America. Over there a man succeeds; all he gets is money. Here there's a system open to every one—practically.... ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... moment, when our political and religious life appears to be encountering such a reaction as has not occurred for a long time. The two insane attempts which, within a few weeks, have been made by Social-democracy against the revered and reverend person of the German Emperor have raised a storm of righteous indignation of such violence that calm judgment is entirely overthrown, and that many even of the most liberal of liberal politicians not only impetuously urge us to the severest measures ...
— Freedom in Science and Teaching. - from the German of Ernst Haeckel • Ernst Haeckel
... he was tossed about, half thrown down, bruised, but, clamorous over all other clamours, jumping up and down to shriek over the heads of those who hustled him, his hands waving frantically in the air, his long beard wagging absurdly, still desperately vociferating his Democracy ...
— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington
... Crotona and many other Greek cities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who, having learned obedience under their master, applied what they had learned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted for some thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, and Pythagoreanism as a political ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... democracy thing into the ground. Besides, I've known Nat for years, and besides, he's a mighty good shot and——That's the way it is, see? Next to Nat is Chet Dashaway. Great fellow for chinning. He'll talk your arm off, about religion or politics or books ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... the following day the office of the journal was bombarded by the police and an armed force, when the presses were broken. Against this illegal violence the editors protested. After the Revolution, Carrel assumed the conduct of the journal, and became the firmest as well as the ablest organ of democracy. To the arbitrary and arrogant Perier, he opposed a firm and uncompromising resistance. Every one acquainted with French politics at that epoch is aware of the strenuous and stand-up fight he made ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... we have that state of things, we shall have wars and secret and mendacious diplomacy. And this is one of many overwhelming reasons for building the State on equality of income, because without it equality of status and general culture is impossible. Democracy without equality is a delusion more dangerous than frank oligarchy and autocracy. And without Democracy there is no hope of peace, no chance of persuading ourselves that the sacredness of civilization will protect it ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... September and October, when your Wide-Awakes on the one hand, and your conservative Democracy on the other, were parading the streets with banners and music, as they or their predecessors had done in so many previous contests, and believing that nothing worse could be involved than a possible party defeat and ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... structural unity and centralization, ideas founded on principles which stood in direct opposition to those of feudalism. So it was, though perhaps in a less degree, with the cities. Though adapting themselves in many ways to feudal forms, here the idea of democracy was as strong in its opposition to the dominant principle of feudalism, as ever was that of centralization in the Church. The people, in their own conception at least, stood out as an organic unity, and they considered their rights and duties as matters which concerned them collectively, not separately, ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... prepared by Mr. F.W. Galton, and quoted by Mr. Sydney Webb in "Industrial Democracy," it is clearly shown, that, while the birth-rate and food-rate (defined as the amount of wheat in Imperial quarters, purchased with a full week's wages) gradually increased along parallel lines between ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... mildly sympathetic with England, and mighty sorry in an indefinite way for France and Belgium; but my sympathies were not strong enough in any direction to get me into uniform with a chance of being killed. Nor, at first, was I able to work up any compelling hate for Germany. The abstract idea of democracy did not figure in ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... for continual vigilance and self-control comes from the very make of our souls, for our nature is not a democracy, but a kingdom. In us all there are passions, desires, affections, all of which may lead to vice or to virtue: and all of which evidently call out for direction, for cultivation, and often for repression. Then there are peculiarities ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... not do to say that Peter Cooper was exactly disgusted with the public-school system of New York, for he, more than any other one man, had evolved it and carried it forward from very meager beginnings. Democracy is a safeguard against tyranny, but it often cramps and hinders the man of genuine initiative. If the entire public-school system of the State had been delegated to Peter Cooper in Eighteen Hundred Fifty, he as sole commissioner could and would ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... poet of "Democracy," born in Long Island, U.S., of parents of mingled English and Dutch blood; was a large-minded, warm-hearted man, who led a restless life, and had more in him than he had training to unfold either in speech or act; a man eager, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... reasonable remarks were received as hideous blasphemies; none of the party papers were allowed to print any word of mine; the very Revisionists themselves found that the scandal of my heresy damaged them more than my support aided them; and I found myself an outcast from German Social-Democracy at the moment when, thanks to Trebitsch, the German bourgeoisie and nobility began to smile on me, seduced by the pleasure of playing with fire, and perhaps by Agnes ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... to the defence and support of the revolution. At the same time, the Committee reminded the Mensheviks that a continuation of their counter-revolutionary work would force the Soviet Government "to expel them to the territories of Kolchak's democracy." This conclusion was greeted with laughter and applause, and with that the ...
— Russia in 1919 • Arthur Ransome
... of the Spirit of the Prophets, the Struggle of the Heroes and the Wisdom of the Founders of Democracy, I Dedicate This Volume. ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... will soon be more closely viewed, or more attentively examined, and what folly has taken for a comet, that from its flaming hair shook pestilence and war, inquiry will find to be only a meteor formed by the vapors of putrefying democracy, and kindled into flame by the effervescence of interest struggling with conviction, which, after having plunged its followers into a bog, will leave us inquiring why ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the National Democratic Convention met at Charleston, South Carolina, in the spring of 1860, to declare the principles on which the ensuing presidential campaign was to be conducted, and select candidates for the offices of President and Vice-President. Appointed a delegate by the Democracy of my State, Louisiana, in company with others I reached Charleston two days in advance of the time. We were at once met by an invitation to join in council delegates from the Gulf States, to agree ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... the worthiest lineage, and can boast a long train of gallant admirers, dead and gone. She has been much in courts. The old Greek tyrants loved her; great Rhamses seated her at his right hand; every prince had his singers. Now we dwell in an age of democracy, and Poetry wins but a feigned respect, more out of courtesy, and for old friendship's sake, than for liking. Though so many write verse, as in Juvenal's time, I doubt if many read it. "None but minstrels list of sonneting." The purchasing public, for poetry, must now consist ...
— Letters on Literature • Andrew Lang
... his true life the political life beyond his real individuality, in so far as religion is here the spirit of bourgeois society, the expression of the separation and the alienation of man from man. The political democracy is Christian to the extent that it regards every individual as the sovereign, the supreme being, but it means the individual in his uncultivated, unsocial aspect, the individual in his fortuitous existence, the individual just as he is, the individual as he is destroyed, lost, and alienated ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx
... through the stage, the favorite amusement of Athenians, aiding to carry on the one great common work, which Plato proposed in his dialogues, and in which all the better and nobler spirits of the time seem to have concurred as by a confederacy—the reformation of an atrocious democracy. There is as much system in the comedies of Aristophanes as in the dialogues of Plato. Every part of a vitiated public mind is exposed in its turn. Its demagogues in the Knights, its courts of justice in the Wasps, its foreign policy in the Acharnians, its ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... and don't like democracy. I suppose so." Still smiling at her he added, "One forgets democracies when one looks at you. You are ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... narrow streets of Worcester had been but lately stained by the blood of heaped corpses. Cromwell was meditating an abolition of the Parliament, and a practical coronation of himself. The world had ceased to wonder at English democracy giving laws to their quondam rulers, and the democracy was beginning to be a little tired of itself, to disbelieve in its own irksome discipline, and to sigh for the flesh-pots of a modified Presbyterian monarchy. Cromwell, indeed, was at the ...
— The Love Letters of Dorothy Osborne to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 • Edward Abbott Parry
... in backstairs diplomacy any more than Dr. Hollweg. I believe the people of a nation are entitled to know what is going on. This German diplomacy may be all right in a monarchy of the most limited type but it will not go at all in a modern democracy. ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... was the case in all Greek towns, namely, there were two parties, aristocratic and democratic. The democracy being now in the ascendant in Thebes, the party which favoured the Spartans, the most aristocratic state in Greece, ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... life, plunges into the sea and awakes in the lost island of Atlantis, known as the Scarlet Empire, where a social democracy is in full operation, granting every man a living but limiting food, conversation, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... heavily gilded. To do him justice, he would not have married the wealthiest plebeian in Germany. An American: that was another matter. If there were such a thing as an aristocracy in this absurd country which pretended to be a democracy and whose "society" was erected upon the visible and screaming American dollar, no doubt Miss Howland belonged to the highest rank. In Germany she would have been a princess—probably of a mediatized house, and, he confessed it amiably enough, she looked the part more unapologetically ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... than any other country in Europe by reverting to those sound principles of democracy which formed her erstwhile glory. We do not forget what we owe her, nor the noble spirit which pervades some of her historic deeds. But noblesse oblige, and all the more binding is her duty to ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... Hill and Appomattox, as the beginning and the end of all possible progress in human rights. As a woman she was naturally an aristocrat, but as an American she was theoretically a democrat; and it astounded, it alarmed her, to hear American democracy denounced as a shuffling evasion. She had never cared much for the United States Senate, but she doubted if she ought to sit by when it was railed at as a rich man's club. It shocked her to be told that the rich and poor were not equal before the law in a country where justice must be paid ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Panathenaea, or the festivals of all the Atticans. He encouraged the nobles to reside at Athens, and surrendered a part of his kingly prerogatives to them; for which reason he is perhaps represented as the founder of the Athenian democracy, although the government which he established was, and continued to be long after him, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... the ideals of our forefathers, the means they took to realize them, and to what extent they succeeded. It is only in this way that we become capable of passing judgment, as citizens, on what is proposed by political and social reformers, and thus justify and guarantee our existence as a democracy. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... think the salon reserve exists any more—the blue ribbon certainly not. The rising flood of democracy and equality wouldn't submit to any such barrier. I remember quite well one beautiful woman standing for some time just the wrong side of the ribbon. She was so beautiful that every one remarked her, but she had no official ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... being born in a superior rank. The good servant was one who, from childhood, had learned "to order himself lowly and reverently to all his betters." When New England brought to these shores the theory of democracy, she brought, in the persons of the first pilgrims, the habits of thought and of action formed in aristocratic communities, Winthrop's Journal, and all the old records of the earlier colonists, show households where masters and mistresses ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... troublesome. The conduct of these, proved that it was natural for the strong to tyrannize over the weak. I have often thought that our assemblage of prisoners, resembled very much the Grecian and Roman democracies, which were far, very far, beneath the just, rational, and wisely guarded democracy of our dear America, for whose existence and honor we are all still heartily disposed to risk our lives, and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... as players in their battles, like a game of chess, actually. Come to think of it, chess did originate in the realm of the gods after the laws. Things were quite a mess back then, though, with a whole horde of demi-gods walking the earth, and it ended up snuffing out the first flames of democracy and leaving monarchies for the ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... in London proposed to reprieve Porteous, the wild democracy of Edinburgh were not willing to lose their vengeance so lightly. The deaths caused by the discharge of the pieces of Porteous's men had aroused the most passionate resentment in Edinburgh. Men of all classes, those directly affected by the deaths of friends ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... blood is n't a matter of geography. There's not a village in the United States that does n't have its classes. The more loudly they brag of their democracy, the greater the distance from the ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... leveller in the shape of a religious prophet has to arise—the Buddha, the Christ, or some Saint Francis, some Rousseau or Tolstoi—to redispel our blindness. Yet, little by little, there comes some stable gain; for the world does get more humane, and the religion of democracy tends toward ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... cried the bookseller, "I'm perfectly delighted. It shows that my contention is right: people DO really care for good books. If an assistant chef is so fond of good books that he has to steal them, the world is safe for democracy. Usually the only books any one wants to steal are sheer piffle, like Making Life Worth While by Douglas Fairbanks or Mother Shipton's Book of Oracles. I don't mind a man stealing books if he ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... the establishment of our free Constitution the civilized world has been convulsed by revolutions in the interests of democracy or of monarchy, but through all those revolutions the United States have wisely and firmly refused to become propagandists of republicanism. It is the only government suited to our condition; but we have never sought to impose it on others, and ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... "Pal Athene," who has been aptly styled "the leading light of the democracy," contributes what is perhaps the most wonderful and powerful article which we have had the pleasure of publishing ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... to be vexed with shadowy craft that some of the populace affirmed to be no boats, but spirits in disguise. One of these apparitions was held in fear by the Democracy of Essex County, as it was believed to be a forerunner of Republican victory. The first recorded appearance of the vessel was shortly after the Civil War, on the night of a Democratic mass-meeting at Tappahannock. ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... you know you are wronging them," she said. "You also know that even if they were hostile to you, you could stay and compel them to acknowledge you. I fancy you once admitted as much to me. What has become of the pride of the democracy you ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... suffrage. He urged. He exhorted. He apologized. He explained. He pleaded. He condemned. Often he was heckled. Often he saw huge "VOTE AGAINST WILSON! HE KEPT US OUT OF SUFFRAGE!" banners at the doors of his meetings. One woman in Arizona, who, unable longer to listen in patience to the glory of "a democracy where only were governed those who consented," interrupted him. He coldly answered, "Madam, you cannot pick cherries before they are ripe." By the time he got to. California, however, the cherries had ripened considerably, for Mr. Bryan came out ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... expensively kill one another." Her voice had a bitter ring to it. "You try to talk peace and they bowl you over, with facts on the need of preparedness—for the defence of your country. And that doesn't appeal to me very much. I want a bigger preparedness—for the defence of the whole world—for democracy, and human rights, no matter who the people are! I'd like to train every ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... redress on behalf of any one to whom wrong was being done; thirdly, the institution of the appeal to the jurycourts; and it is to this last, they say, that the masses have owed their strength most of all, since, when the democracy is master of the voting-power, it is master of the constitution. Moreover, since the laws were not drawn up in simple and explicit terms (but like the one concerning inheritances and wards of state), disputes inevitably occurred, ...
— The Athenian Constitution • Aristotle
... was it that foiled alike the counsel of statesmen and the passionate love of liberty in the people at large? What was it which drove Dante into exile and stung the simple-hearted Dino into a burst of eloquent despair? The answer—if we set aside the silly talk about "democracy" and look simply at the facts themselves—is a very simple one. The ruin of Florentine liberty, like the ruin of liberty elsewhere throughout Italy, lay wholly with its noblesse. It was equally perilous for an Italian town to leave its nobles without ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... serfdom, became more oppressive as their power increased, it was the mountain shepherds who, in the year 1403, struck the first blow for liberty. Once free, they kept their freedom, and established a rude democracy on the heights, similar in form and spirit to the league which the Forest Cantons had founded nearly a century before. An echo from the meadow of Gruetli reached the wild valleys around the Sentis, and Appenzell, by the middle of the fifteenth century, became one of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... the smaller societies and those of the great European nations there is no useful parallel to be drawn, although the predominance of classical learning made it the fashion for a long time to apply Greek speculations on the nature of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to public questions in modern Europe. Representation (q.v.), the characteristic principle of European constitutions, has, of course, no place in societies which were not too large to admit of every free citizen participating personally in the business of government. Nor is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... gas mask and how to go without food; how to shoulder arms and how to march. But the schools all along the line did help to give them ideals, did train them in team-play; did instil into them the principles of democracy and the love of country, so that when the need came they arose as one man to repel the foe. And the study of arithmetic, geography, and grammar; of chemistry, physics, and medicine; of Latin, Greek, and history has, in each case, made ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... looser sense "Liberty is regarded as the equivalent of Parliamentary government."[30] We speak of one type of Constitution as "free" and of another type as "unfree." The so-called "free" type of government is that in which political power rests in the hands of the Democracy, whereas in "unfree" States the people are in subjection to a ruling person or class. From the point of view of the individual subject this distinction has no meaning at all. For the laws passed by a Democratic ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw
... and Gibson, the lyrics of Patrick MacGill, the peasant or artisan plays which have been produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, may well be the beginning of a great democratic literary movement. Democracy, in its striving after a richer and fuller life for the people of England, is at last turning its attention to literature and art. It is slowly realising two great truths. The first is that literature may be used as a ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... revenues are in general better administered; and even where this is not the case, it has at first the advantage of not being governed by court favourites. But, on the other hand, the corrupting power in a democracy, when once brought into action, erelong becomes more dissolving than in a despotism; for instead of paying court merely to the friends and relations of the prince, it becomes necessary to provide for the friends and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... much a symbol of democracy?" I asked. "I fancy that while three men have made the telegraph to get dividends, about a thousand men have preserved the forest to cut wood. But if the telegraph pole is hideous (as I admit) it is not due to doctrine but rather to commercial anarchy. If any one had a doctrine about ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... of kingdom can be built in the heart of a child, an oligarchy, a democracy or a republic," he answered quickly. "Your name-daughter is a ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... of Count Jean in the beginning of the 16th century left to his son Jean II the task of upholding the old ideals of the Gruyere house against the continually growing democracy in Switzerland, as well as against the advance of religious reform. Endowed with all his father's firmness, he possessed the chivalric ardor of his predecessors and a full share of their personal charm. The long ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... remained clear and even to the end, in spite of the fact that he wrote all his books, articles, and letters with his own hand until the last few years, when he occasionally had assistance with his correspondence; but his last two books, "Social Environment" and "The Revolt of Democracy," written when he was 90 years of age, were penned by himself, and the MSS. are ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... rested, and by his attitude in religious matters he had won for himself the support of the Calvinist preachers. His agents, Deventer in Utrecht, Aysma in Friesland and Sonoy in the North-Quarter, were able men, who could count on the help of the democracy, whom they flattered. So Leicester came back with the determination to override the opposition of the Estates of Holland and compel their submission to his will. But he found that he only succeeded ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... worshipping the republic and calling each other citizen with increasing seriousness until some other part of the truth broke into our republican temple. But in fact we have turned the freedom of democracy into a mere scepticism, destructive of everything, including democracy itself. It is none the less destructive because it is, so to speak, an optimistic scepticism—or, as I have said, a dreary hope. It was none the better because the destroyers ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... A simple democracy exists among these people, and they have a variety of tribal offices to fill. In this way the men of the tribe are graded, and they pass from grade to grade by a selection practically made by the people. And this leads to a constant discussion of the virtues and abilities of ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... of the best of the critics to unfortunate silence and paralysis of effort, and others to burst into speech so passionately and intemperately as to lose listeners. Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,—criticism of writers by readers,—this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society. If the best of the American Negroes receive by outer pressure a leader whom they had not recognized before, manifestly there is here a certain palpable gain. Yet there is also irreparable ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... gazing silently through the open doors into the forward cabin; for all idea of retiring within oneself, unless it might be to secret prayer, was banished from the mind. Even Mr. Dodge had forgotten the gnawings of envy, his philanthropical and exclusive democracy, and, what was perhaps more convincing still of his passing views of this sublunary world, his profound deference for rank, as betrayed in his strong desire to cultivate an intimacy with Sir George Templemore. As for the baronet himself, he sat by the cabin-table with his face ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... George Washington an officer in the English Army, and Christ, our Lord, a Jew. Geography, as it is now taught with copious illustrations and descriptions, shows undreamed-of beauties in countries hitherto despised. And gradually, as the pupils move on from class to class, they learn true democracy and ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... differentiate natural influences so as to ascribe to each its value. The ideals of nations, like those of individuals, are derived from all the concrete qualities of character." [Footnote: F. H. Giddings in "Democracy and Empire."] The ideals which are a compelling force in our nation to-day cannot be ascribed to any one force, but are the result of all those formative reactions which are the product of racial, economic, social, ethical and religious forces, the latter ...
— Home Missions In Action • Edith H. Allen
... governments of which I spoke, so far as they have distinct names, are, first, those of Crete and Sparta, which are generally applauded; what is termed oligarchy comes next; this is not equally approved, and is a form of government which teems with evils: thirdly, democracy, which naturally follows oligarchy, although very different: and lastly comes tyranny, great and famous, which differs from them all, and is the fourth and worst disorder of a State. I do not know, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Great things are no longer contemplated with reverence. They are hauled down from their pedestals in order to be rendered accessible to a generation of pigmies; their dignity is soiled by vulgar contact. This lust of handling—what is its ordinary name? Democracy. It has abraded the edge of that keen anthropocentric outlook of the Greeks which exalted whatever was distinctively human. Men have learnt to see beauty here, there, and everywhere—a little beauty, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... again. And laying the book on the ground he began, as if inspired by what he had read, to write a note upon the importance of history—upon democracy—one of those scribbles upon which the work of a lifetime may be based; or again, it falls out of a book twenty years later, and one can't remember a word of it. It is a little painful. It had better ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... known. You are too shy; you didn't afford my friend here the pleasure of making your acquaintance, and I had to tell him the sort of person you really are. Serves you right, Gus, for being so exclusive. Gad! I think I'll give you a few lessons in democracy. Now then, come along! I'm ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a mighty nation of a hundred and ten million people, with all its priceless memories of the past and its infinite hopes for the future; he would do them in the sacred name of patriotism, and the still more sacred name of democracy. And—most convenient of circumstances—the big business men of American City, who had established a secret service bureau with Guffey in charge of it, would go right on putting up their funds, and paying Peter fifty dollars a week and expenses ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and agreed starting point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves ...
— Lincoln's Inaugurals, Addresses and Letters (Selections) • Abraham Lincoln
... that the sovereign may entrust the care of the government to the whole nation or to the greater part of the nation, so that there are more citizen magistrates than private citizens. This form of government is called Democracy. ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... we, if we are Christian people, have the prerogative of direct access to the Divine Presence, and need neither Church nor sacraments to intervene or mediate between us and Him. The true democracy of Christianity lies in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... were essentially democratic, and he showed an almost undue deference to the will of the people, giving them a year's practical experience of democracy which ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... be given the power to render valueless to posterity the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives; but Mac was merely a man, of fearless integrity, honesty of purpose, with humanitarian ideals, and a believer in Democracy; he could not realize that a large majority, because of selfishness, ignorance, and a lack of the spirit of self-sacrifice, do not deserve the right to vote. But Mac was a sportsman and a gentleman, the descendant ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... hands. Yet, somehow, I always feel in his presence as one does when standing on the bow of an ocean liner, with the salt breeze whizzing into your heart. He is a force of nature, yet he explains nothing: a thorough man of the world; droll, sarcastic, generous and I believe for democracy he is unequaled by any Tammany politician: he knows more policemen, dopes, conductors, beggars, chauffeurs, gangsters, bartenders, jobless actors, painters, preachers, anarchists, and all the rest of New York's ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... mixed social order; and she was perfectly willing to make the effort. She was really charming to everybody. The consciousness that she was successfully adapting herself to their primitive provincial scope, and her very gracious condescension to all types, filled her with respect for her democracy and ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... title. In fact perhaps no term could have been found that would have been less appropriate. For Walter King possessed neither dignity of rank nor of stature. On the contrary he was a short, snub-nosed boy of fifteen, the epitome of good humor and democracy. ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... to have a touch of ideality. ROYCE'S 'loyalty to loyalty' is an excellent example. 'Causes,' as anti-slavery, democracy, liberty, etc., dwindle when realized in their sordid particulars. The veritable 'cash-value' of the idea seems to cleave to it only in the abstract status. Truth at large, as ROYCE contends, in his Philosophy of Loyalty, appears another thing altogether from ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... designs of conquest. The object sought by the United States in the war would not, in the views of many, be achieved unless the world was organized to resist future aggression. The essential thing, as the President saw it, in order to "make the world safe for democracy" was to give permanency to the peace which would be negotiated at the conclusion of the war. A union of the nations for the purpose of preventing wars of aggression and conquest seemed to him the most practical, if not the ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... was one of action, and not of ceremonies. No pipe was smoked, nor any of the observances of the great councils of the tribe attended to; the object was merely to glean facts and to collect opinions. In all the tribes of this part of North America, something very like a principle of democracy is the predominant feature of their politics. It is not, however, that bastard democracy which is coming so much in fashion among ourselves, and which looks into the gutters solely for the "people," forgetting that the landlord has just as much right to ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... Age artizan might doubtless have beheld Pears' soap and the deceased wife's sister looming dimly in the remote future. Till that moment human life had been almost stationary: thenceforth, it proceeded by leaps and bounds, like a kangaroo society, on its upward path towards triumphant democracy and the penny post. The nineteenth century and all its wiles hung by a thread upon the success of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... which the force of public opinion may work, fusing differences, breaking down prejudices, and checking the "despotism of situations." The essay concludes characteristically with the refusal to believe that democracy is necessarily unpoetic. As "we hold fast to the faith that the 'cultivation of the masses,' which has for the present superseded the development of the individual, will in its maturity produce some higher type of individual manhood than any which the old world has known," ...
— An Estimate of the Value and Influence of Works of Fiction in Modern Times • Thomas Hill Green
... friendship should grow under such conditions. The disparity of our ages and gifts no longer mattered. The pleasant land of play is a democracy where ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... interest scarcely less than in some affair of personal concern, the chances and changes that bear with furtherance or hindrance upon the fortune of united Italy, we are approaching, with a quietness and composure which more than anything else mark the essential difference between our own form of democracy and any other yet known in history, a crisis in our domestic policy more momentous than any that has arisen since we became a nation. Indeed, considering the vital consequences for good or evil that will follow from the popular decision in November, we ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... defeated, and without the aid of the women of the streets, the affair was one of many which presaged the uprising that eventually wrenched the control of Cincinnati from the hands of one of the most notorious political gangs in American democracy. ...
— Frank H. Nelson of Cincinnati • Warren C. Herrick
... prefers the shade, and shuns strong lights: and a city, when involved in misfortunes, becomes timid and weak through its inability to endure plain speaking at a time when it especially needs it, as otherwise its mistakes cannot be repaired. For this reason the position of a statesman in a democracy must always be full of peril; for if he tries merely to please the people he will share their ruin, while if he thwarts them he will be destroyed ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... precipitated from the abuse to the loss of her liberty: both lessons are, perhaps, equally instructive. This second subject is, The History of the Republic of Florence under the House of Medicis: a period of one hundred and fifty years, which rises or descends from the dregs of the Florentine democracy, to the title and dominion of Cosmo de Medicis in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. I might deduce a chain of revolutions not unworthy of the pen of Vertot; singular men, and singular events; the Medicis four times expelled, ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... the constitution, a new form of government, which lately issued from their pulpits, he always thought was, under a calm disguise, the principle that lay lurking in their hearts. He knew, that a wild democracy had overturned kings, lords, and commons; and that a set of republican fanatics, who would not bow at the name of Jesus, had taken possession of all the livings, and all the parishes in the kingdom. ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... seekers after amusement, a lustre to America. * * * He created the metier of showman on a grandiose scale worthy to be professed by a man of genius. He early realized that essential feature of a modern democracy, its readiness to be led to what will amuse and instruct it. He knew that 'the people' means crowds, paying crowds; that crowds love the fashion and will follow it; and that the business of the great man is to make and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... he had ever shown himself at a disadvantage anywhere they had been together. He wore evening clothes when occasion required as unconcernedly as he wore mackinaws and calked boots among his loggers. She had not yet determined whether his equable poise arose from an unequivocal democracy of spirit, or from sheer egotism. At any rate, where she had set out with subtle misgivings, she had to admit that socially, at least, Jack Fyfe could play his hand at any turn of the game. Where or how he came by this faculty, she did not know. In fact, so far as Jack Fyfe's ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... judge me by my actions; they did not inquire into my thoughts. They held their power as limited to the limitation of practice; they did not forbid me to hold a theory. It would be easy to argue here that Western democracy persecutes where even Eastern despotism tolerates or emancipates. It would be easy to develop the fancy that, as compared with the sultans of Turkey or Egypt, the American Constitution is a thing like the ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... that had prepared the Rising in Warsaw and who had only narrowly escaped Russian imprisonment, and the shoemaker Kilinski. Thus for the first time in Polish history artisans and burghers were included in the national governing body. The assembly was animated by that new spirit of democracy in its noblest form in which Kosciuszko himself was steeped. It carried forward the task that the Constitution of the 3rd of May had begun and had been forced by Poland's conquerors to abandon. Its presidency passed by rotation to each member, who called each other "citizen," and who were ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... commander. The government of the Aztec confederacy was essentially democratic, because its organization and institutions were so. If a more special designation is needed, it will be sufficient to describe it as a military democracy. ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... election of Jackson [1] was an event of as much political importance as was the election of Jefferson. Men hailed it as another great uprising of the people, as another triumph of democracy. They acted as if the country had been delivered from impending evil, and hurried by thousands to Washington to see the hero inaugurated and the era of promised ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... amazingly, and contributes no less to legalize their measures. Violence may seem to be excusable in defence of the cause of oppressed right. Thus it is, in the vast labyrinth of human laws, that extreme liberty sometimes corrects the abuses of license, and that extreme democracy obviates the dangers of democratic government. In Europe, associations consider themselves, in some degree, as the legislative and executive councils of the people, which is unable to speak for itself. In America, where they only represent ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... in his gentle voice. "Ward would believe in a party only so long as it agreed with his conscience, I should suppose, and his conscience might make him—anything. And certainly the Bible test would not leave him content with democracy, doctor. Communism is literal Christianity. I can fancy he would leave any party, if he thought its teachings were not supported by the Bible. But I scarcely know him; my ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... death in 1881. His son took without trouble his seat in the Chamber of Deputies. Having married Mademoiselle Therese Montessuy, whose dowry supported his political fortune, he appeared discreetly among the four or five bourgeois, titled and wealthy, who rallied to democracy, and were received without much bad grace by the republicans, whom ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... so far stated what the Romans both did and endured for seven hundred and twenty-five years under the monarchy, as a democracy, and beneath the rule of a few. After this they reverted to nothing more nor less than a state of monarchy again, although Caesar had a plan to lay down his arms and entrust affairs to the senate and the populace. He held a consultation on the subject ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... the work of our associations is educational and legislative in its character. Democratic rule requires that the average citizen be an active, instructed and intelligent ruler of his country and therefore the success of democracy depends upon the education of the people along two principal lines—first, political knowledge; second, and what is of far more importance, political morality. Ideal government is found when we have righteous rulers governing a people of character and intelligence. ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... provision for the poor, choice of civil officers, and so on, which can be in force until accepted by the council. We shall thus, dear friend, I trust, have secured freedom of thought, the sacredness of person and property, popular control over all powers of the state; and we will leave our new democracy to develop itself in accordance with its own genius, unencumbered ...
— A True Hero - A Story of the Days of William Penn • W.H.G. Kingston |
