Quote by Goenawan Mohamad: “Democracy is not a destination. It is a way of walking.”

Democracy is often spoken of as a goal to be reached, as if once achieved it stays. But this quote says democracy is a practice — something you do every day, through how you engage with others, how you handle disagreement, how you protect the marginalized. Stop doing it and you lose it.

Goenawan wrote this in 1998, the year Indonesia's Reformasi movement brought down Suharto after thirty-two years of authoritarian rule. It was a period of extraordinary political transition and also great uncertainty about what Indonesian democracy would actually mean in practice.

Indonesian poet, essayist, and intellectual, born in Batang in 1941 and the founder and longtime editor of the cultural magazine Tempo. One of the most important public intellectuals in modern Indonesia, his Catatan Pinggir columns and poetry combined aesthetic refinement with political courage.