Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it that the Union was preserved.

If we have a chance of succeeding and bringing stability and democracy to Iraq it will mean learning from our mistakes not denying them and not ignoring them.

I can't talk about foreign policy like anyone who's spent their life reading and learning foreign policy. But as a citizen in a democracy it's very important that I participate in that.

I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing it's not a western invention.

For centuries America has led the world on a long march toward freedom and democracy. Let's reclaim our clean energy leadership and lead the world toward clean energy independence.

Our democracy poses problems and these problems must and shall be solved by courageous leadership.

The Chinese leadership hoped that the world would soon forget the Tiananmen Square massacre. Our job in Congress is to ensure that we never forget those who lost their lives in Tiananmen Square that day or the pro-democracy cause for which they fought.

I also know that there have been many times in our history when the proximity of an election has induced exactly the kind of leadership and consensus-building that produce progress in our democracy.

Dr. King's leadership reaffirmed the promise of our democracy: that everyday people working together have the power to change our government and our institutions for the better.

Under the leadership of this President the state of the union is not strong. We are being pulled apart rather than pulling together. Our democracy is suffering from the choices being made and yet we are offered the same tired excuses and unrealistic analyses.

So I think democracy in the long-term in our countries will survive if it comes to be associated with leadership will not survive if democracy plus media brings to us more and more followship rather than leadership.

The more that social democracy develops grows and becomes stronger the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies the leadership of their movement and the determination of its direction into their own hands.

A functioning robust democracy requires a healthy educated participatory followership and an educated morally grounded leadership.

Obama has already rejected the bright sunlight of public knowledge which is democracy's great disinfectant and cure.

Widespread public access to knowledge like public education is one of the pillars of our democracy a guarantee that we can maintain a well-informed citizenry.

If information and knowledge are central to democracy they are conditions for development.

We are in this business whether it be intelligence or the government to protect freedom democracy and liberty not to violate that.

Our democracy our constitutional framework is really a kind of software for harnessing the creativity and political imagination for all of our people. The American democratic system was an early political version of Napster.

Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are as a nation. And it is the fondest hope of all Americans that we can help bring democracy to every corner of the world.

It's true that General Musharraf opposes my return seeing me as a symbol of democracy in the country. He is comfortable with dictatorship. I hope better sense prevails.

In Afghanistan there is a plan to build democracy hundreds of thousands of troops are protecting it. There is a plan to rebuild and reconstruct there. But many thousands of Americans die from violence and poverty every year and we don't have a plan for reconstruction at home.

Because of my parents' love of democracy we came to America after being driven twice from our home in Czechoslovakia - first by Hitler and then by Stalin.

But if there's an erosion at home you know Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy we've made a terrible mistake.

Given political history in Chile it seemed to me that there was a critical task of consolidating a democracy and creating healthy civic-military and political-military relationships.