Democracy Quotes for Monday

 I couldn't just pick three quotes for Monday's class. Looking back on our semester, we have read and researched so much about democracy that I had forgot some of the authors and texts that we studied! Here are my favorite 7 that I have found thus far;  I will elaborate with my own thoughts on three of them. 
1."Of course, a multitude of persons are to be found who entertain the same number of ideas on religion, history, science, political economy, legislation, and government.  The gifts of intellect proceed directly from God, and man cannot prevent their unequal distribution.  But it is at least a consequence of what we have just said, that although the capacities of men are different, as the Creator intended they should be, Americans find the means of putting them to use are equal" (55).  Alexis De Tocqueville's Democracy in America
        These different gifts we are given allow us to each learn how to live among those we do not always agree with. Americans find the means of putting their different gifts together to live peaceably in a society.  Furthermore, I think that having different gifts and views is key in a democracy, because without opposing or different views, there would be no basis on which to build a lot of our social capital.  If everyone had the same gifts, the world would be a very different place. 
 2.  "And like other American Dreams, the power of this one lay in a sense of collective ownership: anyone can get ahead.  An assertion of universal enfranchisement is routinely reaffirmed by this dream's boosters...Occasionally, it has been roundly condemned as an opiate of the people..."  -- Cullen
              Democracy provides the opportunity or people to get ahead of others. Without democracy, people wouldn't strive for the best, strive for what they want, or strive to get their opinion heard.  The collective ownership that we have to succeed in America has made our democracy flourish; people know that they can get ahead, especially if they join with others (voluntary associations) to make it happen. 

3. "...In democracies there is always a multitude of persons whose wants are above their means, and who are very willing to take up imperfect satisfaction, rather than abandon the object of their desires altogether"

--Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America

             Democracy demands that compromises are made.  Maybe not compromises between different people's opposing opinions, but compromises between people to live peaceably together.  This means that people are willing to not always get what they want, because they understand that democracy is a give and take kind of process. 

 4. "The first is to get people within a given institution talking with each other about their concerns.  In the case of a church this would mean hundreds of individual conversations and small gatherings -- called 'one-on-ones' and 'house meetings,' respectively -- among church members.  The second objective is to identify and cultivate leaders from within.  These leaders represent their institutions in the citizens' organization and in the broader forum of public discussion" (2).  -- Stout

 5."One way of defining democracy would be to call it a political system in which people actively attend to what is significant" (273).  -- Robert Bellah

6. "There is no such thing as the 'perfect form of government' on earth, but any other form of government produces even less desirable results than democracy.  Until today, no other form of government has been invented that could regulate public affairs better than democracy" -- Sir Winston Churchill.
7.  Lincoln on the last page of Cullen's chapter 3:  "Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away" (102).