DEMOCRACY • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Democracy

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/dɪmˈɑkrəsi/ Listen

Democracy

noun

(pl. democracies)

The political orientation of those who favor government by the people or by their elected representatives.

A political system in which the supreme power lies in a body of citizens who can elect people to represent them. Synonyms: commonwealth, republic.

The doctrine that the numerical majority of an organized group can make decisions binding on the whole group. Synonym: majority rule.

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parliamentary democracy

social democracy

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"Democracy" Quotes from Famous Books

... bee is a most significant thing," said Kelso. "Democracy tends to universal friendship—each works for the crowd and the crowd for each and there are no favorites. Every community is like the thousand friends of Thebes. Most of its units stand together for the common good—for justice, law and honor. The schools are spinning strands of democracy ...

— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller

... Atlantic City to lay out elaborate gardens, which with suitable culture are successful. Fine avenues of the best construction lead off to Shell Beach or to the single hill boasted by the locality. Finally, remembering the claims of the great democracy to a wash-basin, the aediles invited Tom, Dick and Harry, and set up the Excursion or Sea-View House, with its broad piazzas, its numberless facilities for amusement, and its enormous dining-hall, which can be changed on occasion into a Jardin Mabille, ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various

... are other reasons for objecting to class stratification of income which have heaped themselves up since the time of Jesus. In politics it defeats every form of government except that of a necessarily corrupt oligarchy. Democracy in the most democratic modern republics: Prance and the United States for example, is an imposture and a delusion. It reduces justice and law to a farce: law becomes merely an instrument for keeping the poor in subjection; and accused ...

— Preface to Androcles and the Lion - On the Prospects of Christianity • George Bernard Shaw

... he had been a slaveholder. The Liberty party, in running Birney, simply committed a political crime, evil in almost all its consequences. They in no sense paved the way for the Republican party, or helped forward the Anti-Slavery cause, or hurt the existing organizations. Their effect on the Democracy was nil; and all they were able to accomplish with the Whigs was to make them put forward for the ensuing election a slaveholder from Louisiana, with whom they were successful. Such were the remote results of their conduct; the immediate evils ...

— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume

... her life. She comes of a long line of statesmen, and having no father or brother or husband to uphold the family traditions of Democracy, she upholds them herself. She is intensely interested just now in the party nominations. A split among the Republicans gives her hope of the election of the Democratic candidate. She's such a feminine little creature with her soft voice and appealing manner, with her big white aprons ...

— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

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