Quote: Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. Author: John Adams 1735-1826, Second President of the USA
Quote: Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told. Author: Dave Barry American Humorist, Author
Quote: Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust. Author: Jean Baudrillard French Postmodern Philosopher, Writer
Quote: The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Honorable Gentleman for four and a half years. Author: Aneurin Bevan 1897-1960, British Labor Politician
Quote: 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. Author: Robert Bianco American Radio / TV Editor
Quote: The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry. Author: William F. Buckley 1925-, American Writer
Quote: Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. Author: Gilbert K. Chesterton 1874-1936, British Author
Quote: 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. Author: Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British Statesman, Prime Minister
Quote: 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. Author: Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British Statesman, Prime Minister
Quote: The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard. Author: Grover Cleveland 1837-1908, Twenty-second & 24th President of the USA
Quote: The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity. Author: James F. Cooper 1789-1851, American Novelist
Quote: When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. Author: Eugene V. Debs 1855-1926, American Socialist Leader
Quote: Nor is the people's judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few. Author: John Dryden 1631-1700, British Poet, Dramatist, Critic
Quote: 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. Author: Bob Dylan 1941-, American Musician, Singer, Songwriter
Quote: Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism. Author: Edward M. Forster 1879-1970, British Novelist, Essayist
Quote: Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people. Author: Harry Emerson Fosdick 1878-1969, American Minister
Quote: 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. Author: John Kenneth Galbraith 1908-, American Economist
Quote: Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa! Author: Allen Ginsberg 1926-, American Poet
Quote: Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life. Author: Mikhail Gorbachev 1931-, Soviet Statesman and President of USSR (1988-91)
Quote: The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy. Author: Mikhail Gorbachev 1931-, Soviet Statesman and President of USSR (1988-91)
Quote: Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections. Author: Meg Greenfield
Quote: The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land. Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809-1894, American Author, Wit, Poet
Quote: I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me. Author: Langston Hughes 1902-1967, American Poet, Short-story Writer, Playwright
Quote: 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. Author: Hubert H. Humphrey 1911-1978, American Democratic Politician, Vice President
Quote: 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. Author: Henrik Ibsen 1828-1906, Norwegian Dramatist
Quote: Democracy without morality is impossible. Author: Jack Kemp American Football Player
Quote: Chinks in America's egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism. Author: Florence King 1936-, American Author, Critic
Quote: 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. Author: Paul Klee 1879-1940, Swiss Artist
Quote: Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave. Author: Karl Kraus 1874-1936, Austrian Satirist
Quote: Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity. Author: Irving Kristol
Quote: 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. Author: D. H. Lawrence 1885-1930, British Author
Quote: 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. Author: D. H. Lawrence 1885-1930, British Author
Quote: As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Author: Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, Sixteenth President of the USA
Quote: No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent. Author: Abraham Lincoln 1809-1865, Sixteenth President of the USA
Quote: 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. Author: Walter Lippmann 1889-1974, American Journalist
Quote: 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.'' Author: Walter Lippmann 1889-1974, American Journalist
Quote: 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. Author: Walter Lippmann 1889-1974, American Journalist
Quote: Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor. Author: James Russell Lowell 1819-1891, American Poet, Critic, Editor
Quote: 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. Author: Archibald Macleish 1892-1982, American Poet
Quote: 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. Author: Norman Mailer 1923-, American Author
Quote: 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. Author: Thomas Mann 1875-1955, German Author, Critic
Quote: Democracy is also a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses. Author: H. L. Mencken 1880-1956, American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist
Quote: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what They want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Author: H. L. Mencken 1880-1956, American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist
Quote: I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Author: H. L. Mencken 1880-1956, American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist
Quote: The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy. Author: H. L. Mencken 1880-1956, American Editor, Author, Critic, Humorist
Quote: It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd. Author: Henry Miller 1891-1980, American Author
Quote: There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship. Author: Ralph Nader 1934-, American Lawyer, Consumer Activist
Quote: Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary. Author: Reinhold Niebuhr 1892-1971, American Theologian, Historian
Quote: The best way of learning to be an independent sovereign state is to be an independent sovereign state. Author: Kwame Nkrumah Leader of Ghana's fight for Independence
Quote: Everything that is right or natural pleads for separation. The blood of the slain, the weeping voice of nature cries, 'Tis time to part. Author: Thomas Paine 1737-1809, Anglo-American Political Theorist, Writer
Quote: In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks. Author: Chris Patten 1944-, British Statesman, Governor of Hong Kong
Quote: Let the people think they govern and they will be governed. Author: William Penn 1644-1718, British Religious Leader, Founder of Pennsylvania
Quote: Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame. Author: Laurence J. Peter
Quote: Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. Author: Plato BC 427?-347?, Greek Philosopher
Quote: 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. Author: Plato BC 427?-347?, Greek Philosopher
Quote: Freedom without obligation is anarchy. Freedom without obligation is democracy. Author: Earl Riney
Quote: 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. Author: Joseph A. Schumpeter 1883-1950, Austrian-American Economist
Quote: Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few. Author: George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist
Quote: 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. Author: George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950, Irish-born British Dramatist
Quote: Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant. Author: John Simon
Quote: All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy. Author: Alfred E. Smith 1873-1944, American Politician
Quote: 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. Author: Leon Trotsky 1879-1940, Russian Revolutionary
Quote: 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. Author: Mark Twain 1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer
Quote: Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates. Author: Gore Vidal 1925-, American Novelist, Critic
Quote: Democracy is supposed to give you the feeling of choice, like Painkiller X and Painkiller Y. But they're both just aspirin. Author: Gore Vidal 1925-, American Novelist, Critic
Quote: Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. Author: E(lwyn) B(rooks) White 1899-1985, American Author, Editor
Quote: Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. Author: Oscar Wilde 1856-1900, British Author, Wit
Quote: America is the place where you cannot kill your government by killing the men who conduct it. Author: Woodrow T. Wilson 1856-1924, Twenty-eighth President of the USA
Quote: Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles. Author: Woodrow T. Wilson 1856-1924, Twenty-eighth President of the USA
Quote: I believe in democracy, because it releases the energies of every human being. Author: Woodrow T. Wilson 1856-1924, Twenty-eighth President of the USA
Quote: That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic. Author: Woodrow T. Wilson 1856-1924, Twenty-eighth President of the USA
Quote: The world must be made safe for democracy. Author: Woodrow T. Wilson 1856-1924, Twenty-eighth President of the USA