A Quote by Bill Moyers
Democracy belongs to those who exercise it.
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The bread which you hold back belongs to the hungry; the coat, which you guard in your locked storage-chests, belongs to the naked; the footwear mouldering in your closet belongs to those without shoes. The silver that you keep hidden in a safe place belongs to the one in need. Thus, however many are those whom you could have provided for, so many are those whom you wrong.
Democracy feeds on argument, on the discussion as to the right way forward. This is the reason why respecting the opinion of others belongs to democracy.
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.
All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. It has been found out. I must say that it was high time, for all authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your neighbors - between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life belongs to you and that the good is to live it.
My life belongs to me, my love belongs to those who can see it.
The exercise of democracy begins as exercise, as walking around, becoming familiar with the streets, comfortable with strangers, able to imagine your own body as powerful and expressive rather than a pawn.
If grace belongs to God, there are those who say that luck belongs to the Devil and that he looks after his own.
When you restore democracy, you cannot say that only those who worked for the restoration of democracy will be allowed to use the privileges of a democracy.
The task of the media in a democracy is not to ease the path of those who govern, but to make life difficult for them by constant vigilance as to how they exercise the power they only hold in trust from the people.
At a time when 2500 American soldiers have given their lives for the cause of bringing democracy to Iraq, it is sad and frustrating to watch the Republican establishment disgrace the exercise of democracy in our own House of Representatives.
This is the criminal left that belongs not in a dormitory, but in a penitentiary. The criminal left is not a problem to be solved by the Department of Philosophy or the Department of English - it is a problem for the Department of Justice. Black or white, the criminal left is interested in power. It is not interested in promoting the renewal and reforms that make democracy work; it is interested in promoting those collisions and conflict that tear democracy apart.
While the protection of speech is at the bedrock of our democracy, it's critical as a nation that we exercise our right every day - and that includes embracing and engaging with those we may not agree with.
Athletes have the same rights everybody else does. If there is a strength in our democracy, it's that we are encouraged to exercise those rights and speak out and hold people in power in check.
The future belongs to the competent. It belongs to those who are very, very good at what they do. It does not belong to the well meaning.
Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.
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