The DNA of Democracy Quotes

“At the time of the United States’ birth, the practice of slavery was a common practice of the world. The great monarchies and empires of France and Spain, the empires of Russia and China, the pyramidal societies of the Ottomans in southeastern Europe and throughout Arabia were societies of slavery; their vestiges remain today. England, at the time of its own revolution, had held Ireland in its tyrannical grip for more than 500 years: her peasants were powerless. Any who complained or fomented a rebellious uprising were loaded aboard convict ships and sold into forced servitude at the nether ends of the earth. The Irish were “other”; they were lesser, not quite human.”
― Richard C. Lyons, The DNA of Democracy

“Also, from Locke, pertaining to property rights: “the labor of his (her) body and the work of his (her) hands we may say are properly his (their own).” For, “though the water running in the fountain be everyone’s, yet who can doubt, but that in the pitcher is (hers) his only who drew it out.”
― Richard Lyons, The DNA of Democracy

“Yet every man (and woman) has a property in his (her) own person; this nobody has any right to but themselves.”
― Richard Lyons, The DNA of Democracy

“Tocqueville noted, “Equality comes into play when American men display, as they customarily do, full confidence in the reason of their mate and a profound respect for her liberty.”
― Richard Lyons, The DNA of Democracy

“Alexis de Tocqueville: “A man’s admiration for absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him!”
― Richard Lyons, The DNA of Democracy