A Quote by Sandra Day O'Connor

The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy. The problem comes when healthy criticism is replaced with more destructive intimidation and sanctions.

Sandra Day O'Connor

Quote Topics

Criticism Criticize Democracy Destructive Freedom Healthy Intimidation Judges More Necessary Officials Other Problem Public Public Officials Replaced Sanctions Vibrant

Quote Author

Sandra Day O'Connor
American - Judge
Born: March 26, 1930

The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy.

Sandra Day O'Connor

The motive behind criticism often determines its validity. Those who care criticize where necessary. Those who envy criticize the moment they think that they have found a weak spot.

Criss Jami

The problem was to get judges who were not afraid to prosecute Saddam despite intimidation and threats.

Hoshyar Zebari

A vigorous democracy a democracy in which there are freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech would never succumb to communism or any other ism.

Helen Gahagan Douglas

One of the reasons we set up this country, one of the things we celebrate in freedom and democracy of the United States is you can criticize your president. You can criticize the ways in which the country falls short of its values.

Pete Buttigieg

If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy... But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country.

Michael Parenti

Gandhi is the other person. I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.

Vandana Shiva

They criticize the silent ones. They criticize the talkative ones. They criticize the moderate ones. There is no one in the world who escapes criticism.

Nhat Hanh

The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with real freedom. Our founding fathers clearly understood this.

Ron Paul

Voting in this country has essentially been relegated to a very fledging group of election officials, who receive no training and operate on shoestring budgets on one hand, and political consultants whose job is to get their candidates elected on the other. And when you have that kind of scenario, it's really hard to describe yourself as a vibrant democracy. It's an embarrassment.

DeForest Soaries

If we believe in our current penal process, then the penalties imposed by judges and juries should be the only sanctions for one's crime, not the invisible sanctions of the legislature.

Charles B. Rangel

To criticize a person for their race is manifestly irrational and ridiculous, but to criticize their religion, that is a right. That is a freedom. The freedom to criticize ideas, any ideas - even if they are sincerely held beliefs - is one of the fundamental freedoms of society. A law which attempts to say you can criticize? and ridicule ideas as long as they are not religious ideas is a very peculiar law indeed.

Rowan Atkinson

I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.

Woodrow Wilson

We warn our children and grandchildren about peer pressure. We want them to say no to the vices of the world: drinking, drugs, and other destructive behaviors. But as we move from childhood to adulthood, we find the peer pressure changes. Daniel 3:2 notes "the satraps, the administrators, the governors, the counselors, the treasurers, the judges, the magistrates, and all the officials of the provinces" were there. I'm sure more than one of them thought they needed to keep their job with all of its benefits. Not much has changed in two-and-a-half millennia.

O. S. Hawkins

There is nothing sacred or untouchable except the freedom to think. Without criticism, that is to say, without rigor and experimentation, there is no science, without criticism there is no art or literature. I would also say that without criticism there is no healthy society.