“Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not “given”, it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.”

Fundamental violations of human rights always lead to people feeling less and less human.

The main aim of the [political] dialogue should be to resolve the problems of the nation, not to find who is the winner and who is the loser.

You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you know is right.

Government leaders are amazing. So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.

Human rights must be protected by the rule of law, and there can never be occasions where human rights can be neglected or ignored or the rule of law set aside.

Freedom and democracy are dreams you never give up.

We achieve everything by our efforts alone. Our fate is not decided by an almighty God. We decide our own fate by our actions. You have to gain mystery over yourself. It is not a matter of sitting back and accepting.

I don’t like to be called a symbol. And I don’t like to be called an icon. I will just say that I have to work very, very hard. So I’d rather be known as a hard worker. I don’t think symbols do much, nor icons.

Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.

Early childhood development has proved to be very beneficial and very cost-effective in societies where this is been tried. So let’s not confine ourselves to primary education. Let’s think of early childhood development and education as a whole.

Even one voice can be heard loudly all over the world in this day and age.

Each man has in him the potential to realize the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others to realize it.

Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution.

There is nothing to be gained by being unnecessarily nasty. Violence begets violence.

Jobless people will have no self-confidence. And they feel they are worthless because when you don’t have a job you have to rely on someone.

It is not power that corrupts but fear.

I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in England you get neither: you’re ground down by convention. You can’t think as you like and you can’t act as you like. That’s because it’s a democratic nation. I expect America’s worse.

I don’t think we should be engaged in nation-building. It’s not our job to turn foreign nations into democratic utopias, to try to turn Iraq into Switzerland. It is the military’s job to hunt down and kill our enemies, to kill ISIS before they murder American citizens and they wage jihad.

To denumb the creative impulse above all else essential to the vitality and growth of democratic ideals.

The free market is fundamentally humane and democratic, driven by ideas and millions of individual choices about what to do with our money which defy those who benefit from the status quo.

There’s something fundamentally wrong with a system where there’s been 17 years of a Tory Government and the people of Scotland have voted Socialist for 17 years. That hardly seems democratic.

Willing to try to get a better atmosphere through a demonstration of democratic principles, fairness and cooperation, a better product, those will win in the end.

Robin is one of the most native and democratic of our birds; he is one of the family, and seems much nearer to us than those rare, exotic visitants, as the orchard starling or rose-breasted grossbeak, with their distant, high-bred ways.

A community is democratic only when the humblest and weakest person can enjoy the highest civil, economic, and social rights that the biggest and most powerful possess.