Quotes about 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   

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

Baudrillard, Jean on democracy   

"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   

"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   

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

Buckley, William F. on democracy   

"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   

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

Cooper, James F. on democracy   

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

Debs, Eugene V. on democracy   

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

Dryden, John on democracy   

"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   

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

Forster, Edward M. on democracy   

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

Fosdick, Harry Emerson on democracy   

"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."

Galbraith, John Kenneth on democracy   

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

Ginsberg, Allen on democracy   

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail on democracy   

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

Gorbachev, Mikhail on democracy   

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

Greenfield, Meg on democracy   

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

Holmes, Oliver Wendell on democracy   

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

Hughes, Langston on democracy   

"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   

"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."

Ibsen, Henrik on democracy
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"Democracy without morality is impossible."

Kemp, Jack on democracy   

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

King, Florence on democracy   

"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   

"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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"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."

Lawrence, D. H. on democracy   

"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   

"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   

"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   

"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   

"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   

"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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