Optimists - people who believe in Britain, who believe in democracy - they're the people I believe who will vote for us to leave and take back control.
Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of ordinary life.
I have been fighting for democracy since I was 15 when I organised a strike to oppose the Hong Kong government's plan to introduce the Chinese patriotic school education; 100,000 people surrounded a government building with students asking for democracy for every citizen.
Organized religion, wielding power over the community, is antithetical to the process of what modern democracy should define as liberty. The sooner we are without it, the better.
Let me say that if the political arena is your choice as you work to keep our democracy strong and our essential freedoms accessible for all, then that is what you should do, and I salute you. We need champions in all walks of our civic discourse.
It's a relief to hear the rain. It's the sound of billions of drops, all equal, all equally committed to falling, like a sudden outbreak of democracy. Water, when it hits the ground, instantly becomes a puddle or rivulet or flood.
Look at the structure of the Gates Foundation and this idea that, rather than trying to solve these huge global problems through institutions with some kind of democracy and transparency baked into them, we're just going to outsource it to benevolent billionaires.
The President, in talking about freedom and democracy, is sparking a wave of very positive democratic sentiment that might help us override both Islamic fundamentalism that has formed in that region, and also some of the hatred for our policies of invading Iraq.
Democracy is like three oxen pulling a plough. The oxen are the independent powers, but you have to walk in the same direction; otherwise, you cannot plough and that is what was happening in Colombia. One ox was walking in one direction, the other in another direction, so the democracy was not working.
Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.
I have no illusions about our elected politicians. Pakistani democracy is anything but perfect.
The Bush administration's approach to the war on terror collided badly with another of its doctrines, spreading democracy in the Middle East as a panacea to reduce radicalism.
Joe and I are still very aware of the fact that we live in a country where he criticised the government and lived another day. That trumps all. To paraphrase Churchill, democracy is the worst form of government apart from all the other forms of government. You constantly have to fight for it; you have to keep your government honest.
One of the most enjoyable things I do at Government House and when I travel around Australia is to talk with children. I tell them about our parliamentary democracy - and I often do that as I'm walking into an Executive Council meeting next door!
A parliamentary democracy that has developed its delicate balances over hundreds of years will not give up its sovereign rights.
You can't be a full participant in our democracy if you don't know our history.
We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation.
Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is a difficult, hard, full-contact, participatory endeavor.
A functioning, robust democracy requires a healthy educated, participatory followership, and an educated, morally grounded leadership.
Democracy is not a spectator sport, it's a participatory event. If we don't participate in it, it ceases to be a democracy.
