Democracy

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.Lord Acton, The History of Freedom and Other Essays, Section III: Sir Erskine Mays Democracy in Europe, p. 76.

Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit.And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness. Variant translation: We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness. Alcuin Works, Epistle 127 to Charlemagne, AD 800

— Democracy god

And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.

— Democracy god

Variant translation: We should not listen to those who like to affirm that the voice of the people is the voice of God, for the tumult of the masses is truly close to madness.

— Democracy god

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

— Democracy society

All deductions having been made, democracy has done less harm, and more good, than any other form of government. It gave to human existence a zest and camaraderie that outweighed its pitfalls and defects. It gave to thought and science and enterprise the freedom essential to their operation and growth. It broke down the walls of privilege and class, and in each generation it raised up ability from every rank and place.Historian Will Durant in his book The Lessons of History, chapter Governement and History p. 78.

— Democracy science

War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy.Will and Ariel Durant, Watchtower ONLINE LIBRARY

— Democracy war

So Two Cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Two cheers are quite enough: there is no occasion to give three.E. M. Forster, What I Believe, ibid, p229.

— Democracy believe

It is not democracy but unlimited government that is objectionable, and I do not see why the people should not learn to limit the scope of majority rule as well as that of any other form of government. At any rate, the advantages of democracy as a method of peaceful change and of political education seem to be so great compared with those of any other system that I can have no sympathy with the antidemocratic strain of conservatism. It is not who governs but what government is entitled to do that seems to me the essential problem.Friedrich Hayek, Why I Am Not a Conservative

— Democracy education

For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good.Heraclitus, fragment 111 G.W.T. Patrick, trans.

— Democracy men

You cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state.Václav Klaus, The Sierra Staff Strikes Back, With Some Help From The SPLC, Czech warns Europe of dream world woes

— Democracy war

Václav Klaus, The Sierra Staff Strikes Back, With Some Help From The SPLC, Czech warns Europe of dream world woes

— Democracy war

A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.James Madison, Federalist Paper #10.

— Democracy death

Hence it is that such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. Theoretic politicians, who have patronized this species of government, have erroneously supposed that by reducing mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would, at the same time, be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opinions, and their passions.James Madison, Federalist No. 10.

— Democracy death

Men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.H. L. Mencken, Introduction to The Antichrist.

— Democracy belief

Politics, under a democracy, reduces itself to a mere struggle for office by flatterers of the proletariat.H. L. Mencken, Introduction to The Antichrist.

— Democracy politics

Democratic regimes may be described as those under which the people are, from time to time, deluded into the belief that they exercise sovereignty over their nation, while in reality the sovereignty at all times resides in and is exercised by other, sometimes irresponsible and secret forces.Benito Mussolini, in The Doctrine of Fascism

— Democracy time

Democratic institutions are quarantine mechanisms for that old pestilence, tyrannic lust. As such they are very useful and very boring.Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All-Too Human, Section 2, Aphorism 298.

— Democracy man

Today we are witnessing the triumph of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure.José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, p. 17.

— Democracy desire

We have really put the duh in democracy, creating a perverse equality that entitles everyone to speak to every issue, regardless of how much they know about it.Laura Penny, More Money Than Brains, p. 13.

— Democracy money

El pueblo unido jamás será vencido, el pueblo unido jamás será vencidoThe people united will never be defeated, The people united will never be defeated Quilapayún, El pueblo unido jamás será vencido

— Democracy people

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.George Bernard Shaw, cited in The Last Word, p. 223.

— Democracy men

If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a foot-rule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.George Bernard Shaw, Maxims for Revolutionists, #16.

— Democracy mind

Together, the property rights and public choice schools show only that, if you start by assuming a purely individualistic model of human behavior and treat politics as if it were a pale imitation of the market, democracy will, indeed, make no sense.

— Democracy politics

Le Césarisme, cest la démocratie sans la liberté.Cæsarism is democracy without liberty. Taxile Delord, LHistoire du Second Empire.

— Democracy liberty

The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.Benjamin Disraeli, Lothair, Chapter XVII.

— Democracy men

Democracy is on trial in the world, on a more colossal scale than ever before.Charles Fletcher Dole, The Spirit of Democracy.

— Democracy world

Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy.James Russell Lowell, Among My Books, New England Two Centuries Ago.

— Democracy books

Democacy gives every man A right to be his own oppressor.James Russell Lowell, Biglow Papers, Series 2. No. 7.

— Democracy man

Thus our democracy was from an early period the most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic.Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay, History, Volume I, p. 20.

— Democracy history

To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, Pray, said Lycurgus, do you first set up a democracy in your own house.Lycurgus in Plutarchs Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders.

— Democracy art

Thunder on! Stride on! Democracy. Strike with vengeful strokes.Walt Whitman, Drum-Taps, Rise O Days From Your Fathomless Deep, No. 3.

— Democracy man

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