In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can face and live with the truth about itself.
Interpretation
Democracy acknowledges its own flaws and can address them, unlike totalitarian regimes.
This quote by Sidney Hook emphasizes the strength of democracy in its ability to confront and accept its own imperfections. Unlike totalitarian systems that often deny or suppress the truth, democratic societies can recognize their shortcomings and engage in open dialogue to improve and grow, which is a vital aspect of their resilience and vitality.
In practice
In a discussion on the value of democratic systems versus authoritarian ones.
A liberal education will impart an awareness of the amazing and precious complexity of human relationships. Since those relationships are violated more often out of insensitiveness than out of deliberate intent, whatever increases sensitiveness of perception and understanding humanizes life.
Everyone recognizes a distinction between knowledge and wisdom. . . Wisdom is a kind of knowledge. It is knowledge of the nature, career, and consequences of human values. Since these cannot be separated from the human organism and the social scene, the moral ways of man cannot be understood without knowledge of the ways of things and institutions.
Tolerance always has limits - it cannot tolerate what is itself actively intolerant.
Idealism, alas, does not protect one from ignorance, dogmatism, and foolishness.
The easiest rationalization for the refusal to seek the truth is the denial that truth exists.
The mob that hails the man on horseback, the Caesars and conquering heroes, does not retain its freedoms for long.
There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.
We should certainly know by now that it is one thing to overthrow a dictator or repel an invader and quite another thing really to achieve a revolution. Time and time and time again, the people discover that they have merely betrayed themselves into the hands of yet another Pharaoh, who, since he was necessary to put the broken country together, will not let them go.
My message to the people and rulers of Pakistan is, 'As neighbours, we want peace and friendship and cooperation with you so that together we can change the face of South Asia.'
Appeasement does not work. As was the case in the 1930s, we see in Saddam Hussein an aggressive dictator threatening his neighbors.
The right to vote is the easiest of all rights to grant.
The best defence [for a democracy, for the public good] is aggressiveness, the aggressiveness of the involved citizen. We need to reassert that slow, time-consuming, inefficient, boring process that requires our involvement; it is called 'being a citizen.' The public good is not something that you can see. It is not static. It is a process. It is the process by which democratic civilizations build themselves.
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