Democracy Quotes
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.Democracy
Adams, John
1735-1826 Second President of the USA
Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you re told.
Democracy
Barry, Dave
American Humorist Author
Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.
Democracy
Baudrillard, Jean
French Postmodern Philosopher Writer
The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Honorable Gentleman for four and a half years.
Democracy
Bevan, Aneurin
1897-1960 British Labor Politician
We once worried that democracy could not survive if an undereducated populace knew too little. Now we worry if it can survive us knowing too much.
Democracy
Bianco, Robert
American Radio / TV Editor
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
Democracy
Buckley, William F.
1925 American Writer
Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
Democracy
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author
It has been said that Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
Democracy
Churchill, Winston
1874-1965 British Statesman Prime Minister
Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
Democracy
Churchill, Winston
1874-1965 British Statesman Prime Minister
The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.
Democracy
Cleveland, Grover
1837-1908 Twenty-second and 24th President of the USA
The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
Democracy
Cooper, James F.
1789-1851 American Novelist
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
Democracy
Debs, Eugene V.
1855-1926 American Socialist Leader
Nor is the people s judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few.
Democracy
Dryden, John
1631-1700 British Poet Dramatist Critic
Democracy don t rule the world, you better get that in your head; this world is ruled by violence, but I guess that s better left unsaid.
Democracy
Dylan, Bob
1941 American Musician Singer Songwriter
Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
Democracy
Forster, Edward M.
1879-1970 British Novelist Essayist
Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
Democracy
Fosdick, Harry Emerson
1878-1969 American Minister
When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It s a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.
Democracy
Galbraith, John Kenneth
1908 American Economist
Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa!
Democracy
Ginsberg, Allen
1926 American Poet
The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
Democracy
Gorbachev, Mikhail
1931 Soviet Statesman and President of USSR (1988-91)
Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.
Democracy
Gorbachev, Mikhail
1931 Soviet Statesman and President of USSR (1988-91)
Everybody s for democracy in principle. It s only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.
Democracy
Greenfield, Meg
The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land.
Democracy
Holmes, Oliver Wendell
1809-1894 American Author Wit Poet
I swear to the Lord, I still can t see, why Democracy means, everybody but me.
Democracy
Hughes, Langston
1902-1967 American Poet Short-story Writer Playwright
It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea.
Democracy
Humphrey, Hubert H.
1911-1978 American Democratic Politician Vice President
The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools? I think we can agree it s the fools, no matter where you go in this world, it s the fools that form the overwhelming majority.
Democracy
Ibsen, Henrik
1828-1906 Norwegian Dramatist
Democracy without morality is impossible.
Democracy
Kemp, Jack
American Football Player
Chinks in America s egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
Democracy
King, Florence
1936 American Author Critic
Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artist s power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence.
Democracy
Klee, Paul
1879-1940 Swiss Artist
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone s slave.
Democracy
Kraus, Karl
1874-1936 Austrian Satirist
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Democracy
Kristol, Irving
You must drop all your democracy. You must not believe in the people. One class is no better than another. It must be a case of Wisdom, or Truth. Let the working classes be working classes. That is the truth. There must be an aristocracy of people who have wisdom, and there must be a Ruler: a Kaiser: no Presidents and democracies.
Democracy
Lawrence, D. H.
1885-1930 British Author
The more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else.
Democracy
Lawrence, D. H.
1885-1930 British Author
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Democracy
Lincoln, Abraham
1809-1865 Sixteenth President of the USA
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other s consent.
Democracy
Lincoln, Abraham
1809-1865 Sixteenth President of the USA
What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.
Democracy
Lippmann, Walter
1889-1974 American Journalist
This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement -- that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it -- that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.
Democracy
Lippmann, Walter
1889-1974 American Journalist
Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles.
Democracy
Lippmann, Walter
1889-1974 American Journalist
Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor.
Democracy
Lowell, James Russell
1819-1891 American Poet Critic Editor
Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.
Democracy
Macleish, Archibald
1892-1982 American Poet
A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
Democracy
Mailer, Norman
1923 American Author
It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive.
Democracy
Mann, Thomas
1875-1955 German Author Critic
The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
Democracy
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Democracy
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
Democracy is also a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
Democracy
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
Democracy
Mencken, H. L.
1880-1956 American Editor Author Critic Humorist
It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.
Democracy
Miller, Henry
1891-1980 American Author
There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
Democracy
Nader, Ralph
1934 American Lawyer Consumer Activist
Man s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Democracy
Niebuhr, Reinhold
1892-1971 American Theologian Historian
The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state.
Democracy
Nkrumah, Kwame
Leader of Ghana's fight for Independence
Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, Tis time to part.
Democracy
Paine, Thomas
1737-1809 Anglo-American Political Theorist Writer
In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.
Democracy
Patten, Chris
1944 British Statesman Governor of Hong Kong
Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.
Democracy
Penn, William
1644-1718 British Religious Leader Founder of Pennsylvania
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Democracy
Peter, Laurence J.
Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
Democracy
Plato
BC 427-347 Greek Philosopher
These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.
Democracy
Plato
BC 427-347 Greek Philosopher
Freedom without obligation is anarchy. Freedom without obligation is democracy.
Democracy
Riney, Earl
Democracy is a political method, that is to say, a certain type of institutional arrangement for arriving at political -- legislative and administrative -- decisions and hence incapable of being an end in itself.
Democracy
Schumpeter, Joseph A.
1883-1950 Austrian-American Economist
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
Democracy
Shaw, George Bernard
1856-1950 Irish-born British Dramatist
I talk democracy to these men and women. I tell them that they have the vote, and that theirs is the kingdom and the power and the glory. I say to them You are supreme: exercise your power. They say, That s right: tell us what to do; and I tell them. I say Exercise our vote intelligently by voting for me. And they do. That s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for putting the right men in the right place.
Democracy
Shaw, George Bernard
1856-1950 Irish-born British Dramatist
Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
Democracy
Simon, John
All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
Democracy
Smith, Alfred E.
1873-1944 American Politician
There is a limit to the application of democratic methods. You can inquire of all the passengers as to what type of car they like to ride in, but it is impossible to question them as to whether to apply the brakes when the train is at full speed and accident threatens.
Democracy
Trotsky, Leon
1879-1940 Russian Revolutionary
I am a democrat only on principle, not by instinct -- nobody is that. Doubtless some people say they are, but this world is grievously given to lying.
Democracy
Twain, Mark
1835-1910 American Humorist Writer
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
Democracy
Vidal, Gore
1925 American Novelist Critic
Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they re both just aspirin.
Democracy
Vidal, Gore
1925 American Novelist Critic
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
Democracy
White, E(lwyn) B(rooks)
1899-1985 American Author Editor
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
Democracy
Wilde, Oscar
1856-1900 British Author Wit
I believe in democracy, because it releases the energies of every human being.
Democracy
Wilson, Woodrow T.
1856-1924 Twenty-eighth President of the USA
Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.
Democracy
Wilson, Woodrow T.
1856-1924 Twenty-eighth President of the USA
America is the place where you cannot kill your government by killing the men who conduct it.
Democracy
Wilson, Woodrow T.
1856-1924 Twenty-eighth President of the USA
That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.
Democracy
Wilson, Woodrow T.
1856-1924 Twenty-eighth President of the USA
The world must be made safe for democracy.
Democracy
Wilson, Woodrow T.
1856-1924 Twenty-eighth President of the USA