My predecessor set aside democracy to save it from a communist insurgency that numbered less than 500. Unhampered by respect for human rights, he went at it with hammer and tongs. By the time he fled, that insurgency had grown to more than 16,000. I think there is a lesson here to be learned about trying to stifle a thing with a means by which it grows.
Recorded
U.S. Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., AmericanRhetoric.com, 18 September 1986
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Ralph Nader
Lawyer and consumer advocate; author of Unsafe at Any Speed
Too many people who go to the best schools, and get great grades, are confronted with a choice of trivial work that is very high paid, and has some sort of surface status, like senior partner in a law firm, or corporate executive, but most of the work can be done by anybody.
Recorded
Academy of Achievement interview, 16 February 1991
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Barack Obama
44th President of the United States, 2009–2017; United States Senator from Illinois 2005–2008
And democracy requires compromise, even when you are 100 percent right. This is hard to explain sometimes. You can be completely right, and you still are going to have to engage folks who disagree with you. If you think that the only way forward is to be as uncompromising as possible, you will feel good about yourself, you will enjoy a certain moral purity, but you're not going to get what you want.
Recorded
Howard University, Washington, D.C., The White House (Obama administration archive), 7 May 2016
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