Quotes about democracy




These are quotes tagged with "democracy". You can also search for quotes containing the word democracy.

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."

Adams, John on democracy
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"Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told."

Barry, Dave on democracy    Share

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

Baudrillard, Jean on democracy    Share

"The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Honorable Gentleman for four and a half years."

Bevan, Aneurin on democracy    Share

"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."

Bianco, Robert on democracy    Share

"The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry."

Buckley, William F. on democracy    Share

"Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated."

Chesterton, Gilbert K. on democracy
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"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."

Churchill, Winston on democracy
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"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."

Churchill, Winston on democracy
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"The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard."

Cleveland, Grover on democracy    Share

"The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity."

Cooper, James F. on democracy    Share

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong."

Debs, Eugene V. on democracy    Share

"Nor is the people's judgment always true: the most may err as grossly as the few."

Dryden, John on democracy    Share

"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."

Dylan, Bob on democracy    Share

"Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism."

Forster, Edward M. on democracy    Share

"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people."

Fosdick, Harry Emerson on democracy    Share

"Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa!"

Ginsberg, Allen on democracy    Share

"The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy."

Gorbachev, Mikhail on democracy    Share

"Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life."

Gorbachev, Mikhail on democracy    Share

"Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections."

Greenfield, Meg on democracy    Share

"The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land."

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on democracy    Share

"I swear to the Lord, I still can't see, why Democracy means, everybody but me."

Hughes, Langston on democracy    Share

"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."

Humphrey, Hubert H. on democracy    Share

"Democracy without morality is impossible."

Kemp, Jack on democracy    Share

"Chinks in America's egalitarian armor are not hard to find. Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism."

King, Florence on democracy    Share

"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."

Klee, Paul on democracy    Share

"Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave."

Kraus, Karl on democracy
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"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity."

Kristol, Irving on democracy
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"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."

Lawrence, D. H. on democracy    Share

"As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy."

Lincoln, Abraham on democracy
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"No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent."

Lincoln, Abraham on democracy
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"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."

Lippmann, Walter on democracy    Share

"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."

Lippmann, Walter on democracy    Share

"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."

Lippmann, Walter on democracy    Share

"Democracy give every man the right to be his own oppressor."

Lowell, James Russell on democracy
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"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."

Macleish, Archibald on democracy    Share

"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."

Mailer, Norman on democracy
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