Here is the crisis of the times as I see it: We talk about problems, issues, policies, but we don’t talk about what democracy means — what it bestows on us — the revolutionary idea that it isn’t just about the means of governance but the means of dignifying people so they become fully free to claim their moral and political agency.

Bill Moyers (b. 1934) American journalist and public commentator

“The Power of Democracy,” speech, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, New York City (7 Feb 2007)
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Accepting the Frank E. Taplin, Jr. Public Intellectual Award. Reprinted in Bill Moyers, Moyers on Democracy (2008).