A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way. -
Fisher Ames
A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. -
Thomas Jefferson
A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb. -
Emil Cioran
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person. -
James Madison
All those hints and glimpses of a larger and more satisfying democracy, which literature and our own hopes supply, have a tendency to slip away from us and to leave us sadly unguided and perplexed when we attempt to act upon them. -
Jane Addams
Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy. -
Bill Moyers
Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. -
Isaac Asimov
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. -
Abraham Lincoln
As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences. -
Eugene McCarthy
Democracy and so-called human rights are only a window dressing designed to keep the naked facts hidden under a cloak of false decency. -
Paula Horan
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. -
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education. -
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear. -
Alan Coren
Democracy
depends on citizens being informed, and since our media, especially
television (which is the most important source of news for most
Americans) reports mostly what the people in power do, and repeats
what the people in power say, the public is badly informed, and it
means we cannot really say we have a functioning democracy. - Howard
Zinn
Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity. -
Irving Kristol
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. -
James Russell Lowell
Democracy
has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which
we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is
merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true
notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of
words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not
necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who
cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends. -
James
Vial Blake
Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike. -
Plato
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -
George Bernard Shaw
Democracy is a double edge sword. -
Roger Anderson
Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state. -
Vladimir Lenin
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. -
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is a system that gives people a chance to elect rascals of their own choice. -
Doug Larson
Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. -
Saul Alinsky
Democracy is also a single ideology, and, like all such templates, it has its limits. what works in a legislature might not work in a corporation. -
Fareed Zakaria
Democracy is hypocrisy without limitation. -
Iskander Mirza
Democracy is not something you believe in or a place to hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles. -
Abbie Hoffman
Democracy
is popular because of the illusion of choice and participation it
provides, but when you live in a society in which most people’s
knowledge of the world extends as far as sports, sitcoms, reality
shows, and celebrity gossip, democracy becomes a very dangerous idea.
Until people are properly educated and informed, instead of
indoctrinated to be ignorant mindless consumers, democracy is nothing
more than a clever tool used by the ruling class to subjugate the
rest of us. - Gavin
Nascimento
Democracy
is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage. - H. L.
Mencken
Democracy
is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether
they are the powers that ought to be. -
Sydney J. Harris
Democracy
is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are
right more than half the time. - E. B. White
Democracy
is the road to socialism. - Karl Marx
Democracy
is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is
a well-armed lamb contesting the vote! -
Benjamin Franklin
Democracy
is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers. -
Aristotle
Democracy
means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can
stop people talking. -
Clement Atlee
Democracy
means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the
people. -
Oscar Wilde
Democracy
must be built through open societies that share information. When
there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate,
there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of
law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and
indignation. -
Atifete Jahjaga
Democracy
must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to
have for dinner. -
James Bovard
Democracy
works when people claim it as their own. - Bill Moyers
Democracy,
like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not
"given", it is earned through courage, resolution and
sacrifice. - Aung San Suu Kyi
Democracy…
while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy.
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and
murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit
suicide. -
John Adams
Democracy's
worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and
virtues of their constituents. - Robert A. Heinlein
Democratic
institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires. -
Friedrich Nietzsche
Democrats
are children of the Enlightenment. They believe in the perfectibility
of humanity. They revere systems even more than they do results. -
Paul Begala
Dictatorship
naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of
tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty. - Plato
Does
this mean that I am an opponent of democracy? Not at all. Fiction for
fiction, it is the least harmful. But it is well not to confound its
promises with realities. The fiction consists in the postulate of all
democratic government, that the great majority of the electors in a
state are enlightened, free, honest, and patriotic--whereas such a
postulate is a mere chimera. The majority in any state is necessarily
composed of the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least capable;
the state is therefore at the mercy of accident and passion, and it
always ends by succumbing at one time or another to the rash
conditions which have been made for its existence. A man who condemns
himself to live upon the tight-rope must inevitably fall; one has no
need to be a prophet to foresee such a result. - Henri-Frederic
Amiel
Everybody’s for democracy in principle. It’s only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections. -
Meg Greenfield
I
have hinted that what people are afraid of in democracy is less the
thing itself than what they conceive to be its necessary adjuncts and
consequences. It is supposed to reduce all mankind to a dead level of
mediocrity in character and culture, to vulgarize men's conceptions
of life, and therefore their code of morals, manners, and conduct –
to endanger the rights of property and possession. But I believe that
the real gravamen of the charges lies in the habit it has of making
itself generally disagreeable by asking the Powers that Be at the
most inconvenient moment whether they are the powers that ought to
be. If the powers that be are in a condition to give a satisfactory
answer to this inevitable question, they need feel in no way
discomfited by it. - James
Russell Lowell
If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave. - Jane Addams
If
liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found
in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share
in the government to the utmost. -
Aristotle
In
a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because
there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme. -
Aristotle
In
the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and
never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number
should govern and that the few should be governed. - Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
If
we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society
through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then
we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building
this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then
democracy must become a means as well as an end. -
Bayard
Rustin
In
a democracy, every ordinary citizen is effectively a king – but a
king in a constitutional democracy, a monarch who decides only
formally, whose function is merely to sign off on measures proposed
by an executive administration. This is why the problem with
democratic rituals is homologous to the great problem of
constitutional monarchy: how to protect the dignity of the king? How
to maintain the appearance that the king effectively makes decisions,
when we all know this not to be true? - Slavoj
Zizek
Modern
democracies will face difficult new challenges –ighting terrorism,
adjusting to globalization, adapting to an aging society – and they
will have to make their system work much better than it currently
does. That means making democratic decision-making effective,
reintegrating constitutional liberalism into the practice of
democracy, rebuilding broken political institutions and civic
associations. Perhaps most difficult of all, it requires that those
with immense power in our societies embrace their responsibilities,
lead, and set standards that are not only legal, but moral. Without
this inner stuffing, democracy will become an empty shell, not simply
inadequate but potentially dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of
liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life.
- Fareed
Zakaria
On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does. -
Will Rogers
Our
democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that
we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats.
We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee. - Helen
Keller
Remember,
democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders
itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less
selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or
monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history.
Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple
government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud,
violence, and cruelty. - John
Adams
The
best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. - Edward
Abbey
The
death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush.
It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and
undernourishment. - Robert
Hutchins
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. -
Thomas Jefferson
The
democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is
human history. - Franklin
D. Roosevelt
The
essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should
so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality
that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human
being to show what he was meant to become. -
Anna
Garlin Spencer
The
highest measure of democracy is neither the ‘extent of freedom’
nor the ‘extent of equality’, but rather the highest measure of
participation. -
A.
d. Benoist
The
idea of representative democracy will change. Today, we claim we
don't use direct democracy because it would be impractical to poll
everybody on every issue. The truth is that we use representative
democracy because we want to get an above-average group to think
through problems and make choices that, in the short term, might not
be obvious – even if they are to everybody's benefit over the long
term. - Bill
Gates
The
only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of
conformity. - Ambrose
Bierce
The
strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but
they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to
set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose. -
Barack
Obama
The
very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people
must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift,
is to develop each individual into everything that he might be. -
Edwin
H. Land
The
whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of
stupidity attained by the bourgeois. -
Gustave
Flaubert
To
view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic
concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the
very foundation of democracy. - Aung
San Suu Kyi
We
should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a
country through military force. In the past, it has been movements
for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to
flourishing democracies; movements that continue today. This doesn’t
mean abandoning our values and ideals; wherever we can, it’s in our
interest to help foster democracy through the diplomatic and economic
resources at our disposal. But even as we provide such help, we
should be clear that the institutions of democracy – free markets,
a free press, a strong civil society – cannot be built overnight,
and they cannot be built at the end of a barrel of a gun. And so we
must realize that the freedoms FDR once spoke of – especially
freedom from want and freedom from fear – do not just come from
deposing a tyrant and handing out ballots; they are only realized
once the personal and material security of a people is ensured as
well. - Barack
Obama
What
difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of
totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy? -
Mahatma
Gandhi
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. - Walter
Lippmann
You've
got to be an optimist to be a Democrat, and you've got to be a
humourist to stay one. - Will
Rogers