Quotes About Civil Society

 

 

"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

 

 

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. "

Abraham Lincoln

 

 

"What is the revolution that we need? We need to dissolve the lie that some people have a right to think of other people as their property. And we need at last to form a circle that includes us all, in which all of us are seen as equal... We do not belong to the other, but our lives are linked; we belong in a circle of others."

Barbara Deming

 

 

"Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

 

 

"Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe."

Edmund Burke

 

 

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity. "

Irving Kristol

 

 

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

John F. Kennedy

 

 

"Globilization in its current form cannot deliver the benefits expected of it. Civil society, particularly in developing countries, must ensure that it does."

Martin Khor, Director, Third World Network

 

 

"The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within."

Mohandas K. Gandhi

 

 

"I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but inform their discretion."

Thomas Jefferson