Political Quotes, Mostly About Democracy

Aristotle On Democracy: "Rule By The Needy"

http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2013/03/aristotle-on-democracy-rule-by-needy.html

***

The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.
Gunther Grass

Only the educated are free.
Epictetus

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
James Madison

Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.
Thomas Jefferson

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take power from them, but to inform them by education.
Thomas Jefferson

"Democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill

It is the besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which the masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
James Fenimore Cooper

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
James Russell Lowell

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

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.
John Simon

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully ignorant.
John Simon

Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.
John V. Lindsay

Life in freedom is not easy, and democracy is not perfect.
John F. Kennedy

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
John Galbraith

The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.
Mahatma Gandhi

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.
Michel de Montaigne

Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.
Mignon McLaughlin

The human race has entered a stage where we are all dependent on each other. No other country or nation should be regarded in total separation from another, let alone pitted against another.
Mikhail Gorbachev

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.
African proverb

Justice will only exist where those not effected by injustice are filled with the same amount of indignation as those offended.
Plato

The common people suffer when the powerful disagree.
Phaedrus

Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.
Paulo Freire

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato

An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.
Plato

If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Reinhold Niebuhr

The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same.
Robert Anson Heinlein

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.
Robert Bianco

A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.
Saul Bellow

Good government could never be a substitute for government by the people themselves.
Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, British Prime Minister

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.
Theodore H. White

It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Thomas Jefferson

All extremes are bad. All that is good and useful, if carried to extremes, may become-and beyond a certain limit is bound to become-bad and injurious.
V. I. Lenin

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”  

"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton

Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.
Walter Winchell

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.
William Penn

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

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

Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.
Abraham Lincoln

Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"The pen is mightier than the sword." (This is may be the line my Dad quoted most often.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_pen_is_mightier_than_the_sword

Dad was also fond of a (slightly adjusted) line attributed to Voltaire by his biographer, Evelyn Beatrice Hall: "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."  

Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

As a rule, dictatorships guarantee safe streets and terror of the doorbell. In democracy the streets may be unsafe after dark, but the most likely visitor in the early hours will be the milkman.
Adam Michnik

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.
Adlai Ewing Stevenson

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
Alan Coren

Freedom is when the people can speak, democracy is when the government listens.
Alastair Farrugia

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.
Albert Moravia

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
Aldous Huxley

The people is always expressive of the truth. The life of a people cannot be a lie.
Alexander Herzen

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.
Alexander Tytler

Democracy does not create strong ties between people. But it does make living together easier.
Alexis de Tocqueville

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.
Alfred North Whitehead

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.
Alice Walker

Conversation would be vastly improved by the constant use of four simple words: I do not know.
Andre Maurois

Intellectual freedom is the only guarantee of a scientific - democratic approach to politics, economic development, and culture.
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov

We must all live so that our children do not have to pay for our deeds.
Andrejs Upits

Tyranny and despotism can be exercised by many, more rigourously, more vigourously, and more severely, than by one.
Andrew Johnson

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Aristotle

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

If liberty and equality are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.
Aristotle

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.
Aristotle

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
Art Spander

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.
Art Spander

The wild, cruel beast is not behind the bars of the cage. He is in front of it.
Axel Munthe

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the
Ayn Rand

That's free enterprise, friends: freedom to gamble, freedom to lose. And the great thing -- the truly democratic thing about it -- is that you don't even have to be a player to lose.
Barbara Ehrenreich

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin

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

They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.
Benjamin Franklin

Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
Bernard Baruch

Those against politics are in favor of the politics inflicted upon them.
Bertolt Brecht

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.
Bertrand Russell

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.
Bill Vaughan

We are usually convinced more easily by reasons we have found ourselves than by those which have occurred to others.
Blaise Pascal

Those wanting to improve democracy in their countries should not wait for permission.
Bulent Ecevit

Democracy means decision by those concerned.
Carl-Friedrich von Weizsaecker

In order to become the master, the politician poses as the servant.
Charles de Gaulle

Since a politician never believes what he says, he is surprised when others believe him.
Charles DeGaulle

In a democracy everybody has a right to be represented, including the jerks.
Chris Patten

In democracy everyone has the right to be represented, even the jerks.
Chris Patten

He who strikes terror into others is himself in continual fear.
Claudian

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.
Clement Atlee

Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind.
Colton

Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told.
Dave Barry

It is far more honest to be undeservedly ignored than to be honoured without merit.
Denis Fonvizin

So easily do weak men put in high positions turn villains.
Dmitry Pisarev

Politics ought to be the part-time profession of every citizen who would protect the rights and privileges of free people and who would preserve what is good and fruitful in our national heritage.
Dwight D. Eisenhower

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
E. B. White

Tyrants are always assassinated too late. That is their great excuse.
E.M. Cioran

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
E.M. Forster

Freedom without obligation is anarchy. Freedom with obligation is democracy.
Earl Riney

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.
Edmund Burke

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke

General rebellions and revolts of a whole people never were encouraged now or at any time. They are always provoked.
Edmuns Burke

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.
Edvard Teller

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel

He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin

Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

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

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.
Eugene V. Debs

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

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man.
Excerpt from the notebooks of Lazarus Long, from Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough for Love"

Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
F.A. Hayek

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.
Federalist Papers

It's dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Frederick Douglass

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them.
Frederick Douglass

Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want rain without thunder and lightning.
Frederick Douglass

Arbitrary rule has its basis, not in the strength of the state or the chief, but in the moral weakness of the individual, who submits almost without resistance to the domineering power.
Friedrich Hatzel

Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.
Friedrich Nietzsche

You can never have a revolution in order to establish democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
G. K. Chesterton

In free countries, every man is entitled to express his opinions and every other man is entitled not to listen.
G. Norman Collie

Politics needs a flexible mind, for it has no immutable or eternal rules. In politics immutable or eternal rules lead to inevitable and swift defeat.
G. V. Plekhanov

Only the person who does not evade conflict and directs his efforts in keeping with the course of society's development can be an effective leader.
G. V. Plekhanov

Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.
Galbraith's Law

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest.
Gandhi

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw

Democracy: The substitution of election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Bad officials are elected by good citizens who do not vote.
George Jean Nathan

One sharp, stern struggle, and the slaves of centuries are free.
George Massey

As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government.
George Washington

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.
Giordano Bruno

A pedestal is as much a prison as any small space.
Gloria Steinem

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx

A constitutional state is like daily bread, like water to drink and air to breath, and the best thing about democracy is that it is the only system capable of securing the constitutional state.
Gustav Radbruch

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The greatest task of democracy, its ritual and feast - is choice.
H.G. Wells

For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction in stolen goods.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule--and both commonly succeed, and are right...
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods. If such a board actually exists it operates precisely like the board of a corporation that is losing money.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Firmness in decision is often merely a form of stupidity. It indicates an inability to think the same thing out twice.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Truth - Something somehow discreditable to someone.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The argument that capital punishment degrades the state is moonshine, for if that were true then it would degrade the state to send men to war... The state, in truth, is degraded in its very nature: a few butcheries cannot do it any further damage.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Remorse--Regret that one waited so long to do it.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Liberals have many tails and chase them all.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

In this world of sin and sorrow there is always something to be thankful for. As for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The cosmos is a gigantic flywheel making 10,000 revolutions per minute. Man is a sick fly taking a dizzy ride on it.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Injustice is relatively easy to bear; what stings is justice.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Say what you will about the Ten Commandments, you must always come back to the pleasant fact that there are only ten of them.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Hanging one scoundrel, it appears, does not deter the next. Well, what of it? The first one is at least disposed of.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Judge: A law student who marks his own papers.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Lawyer: One who protects us against robbery by taking away the temptation.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A celebrity is one who is known by many people he is glad he doesn't know.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

It is the fundamental theory of all the more recent American law...that the average citizen is half-witted, and hence not to be trusted to either his own devices or his own thoughts.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Creator - A comedian whose audience is afraid to laugh.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Those who can -- do. Those who can't -- teach.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Freedom of press is limited to those who own one.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Of government, at least in democratic states, it may be said briefly that it is an agency engaged wholesale, and as a matter of solemn duty, in the performance of acts which all self-respecting individuals refrain from as a matter of common decency.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, are right.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)

Wherever politics intrudes upon economic life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear rather than what is demonstrably true. Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insi
Hans F. Sennholz

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

Democracy cannot be forced upon a society, neither is it a gift that can be held forever. It has to be struggled hard for and defended everyday anew.
Heinz Galinski

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

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?
Henrik Ibsen

That government is best which governs least.
Henry David Thoreau

If...the machine of government...is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Henry David Thoreau


A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.
Henry de Jouvenel

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.
Herbert Clark Hoover

Calm and order can be just as dangerous to democracy as uneasiness and disorder.
Hildegard Hamm-Bruecher

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Hubert H. Humphrey

Complete equality isn't compatible with democracy, but it is a agreeable to tolitarianism. After all the only way to ensure the equality of the slothful, the inept and the immoral is to suppress everyone else.
Iain Benson

Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social, and even political.
Ignazio Silone

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Irving Kristol

Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity.
Irving Kristol

So many, though reluctant to admit it. Shun clever men, and rather suffer fools.
Ivan Krylov

In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
J. W. Fulbright

In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.
J. William Fulbright

Democracy without morality is impossible.
Jack Kemp

Thinking of mass democracy as government controlled by its employees helps explain the difficulty of changing government policy.
James Davidson

The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.
James Fenimore Cooper

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.
James Fenimore Cooper

The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone.
James Madison

If we advert to the nature of republican government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the government, and not in the government over the people.
James Madison

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
James Madison

Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
James Russell Lowell

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.
Jawaharlal Nehru

Democracy means having the choice. Dictatorship means being given the choice.
Jeannine Luczak

The price of the democratic way of life is a growing appreciation of people's differences, not merely as tolerable, but as the essence of a rich and rewarding human experience.
Jerome Nathanson

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.
Jesse Jackson

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.
Johann von Schiller

Democracy does not race, it reaches the finish slowly but surely.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A free government is a complicated piece of machinery, the nice and exact adjustment of whose springs, wheels, and weights, is not yet well comprehended by the artists of the age, and still less by the people.
John Adams to Thomas Jefferson

Any doctrine that weakens personal responsibility for judgment and for action helps create the attitudes that welcome and support the totalitarian state.
John Dewey

Democracy evolves where freedom is able to determine its own policy.
John Dos Passos

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

Nothing is so admirable in politics as a short memory.
John Kenneth Galbraith

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is generally understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else.
John Maynard Keynes

Anarchy is the sure consequence of tyranny; for no power that is not limited by laws can ever be protected by them.
John Milton

Democracy ... is a system of self-determination. It's the right to make the wrong choice.
John Patrick

If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.
John Stuart Mill

The well being of democracies regardless of their type and status is dependent on one small technical detail: The right to vote. Everything else is secondary.
Jose Ortega y Gasset

Every nation has the government it deserves.
Joseph de Maistre

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
Judge Gideon J. Tucker

I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.
Karl Popper

It is wrong to ask who will rule. The ability to vote a bad government out of office is enough. That is democracy.
Karl Popper

We'd all like to vote for the best man but he's never a candidate.
Kin Hubbard

People despise the lust for power that originates from a craving for homage and for the attributes of power.
Konstantin Ushinsky

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Laurence Peter

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
Laurence Peter

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
Laurens van der Post

Not our location is important, but the direction in which we move.
Lev Tolstoy

Governments need armies to protect them from their enslaved and oppressed subjects.
Lev Tolstoy

Every person knows that he should do what unites, not divides, him and other people.
Lev Tolstoy

The laws of economics tell us that the expansion of the central state can't go on forever. Its limit is reached when the looted turn on the looters.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.
Lord Acton

Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
Ludwig von Mises

The essence of democracy is not that everyone makes and administers laws but that lawgivers and rulers should be dependent on the people's will in such a way that they may be peaceably changed if conflict occurs.
Ludwig von Mises

In the long run the ideas of the majority, however detrimental they may be, will carry on. The future of mankind depends on the ability of the elite to influence public opinion in the right direction.
Ludwig von Mises

Those believing they have not voted are mistaken, for their indifference affects all our futures.
M.A. Denck

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Machiavelli

The spirit of democracy cannot be superimposed from the outside. It must come from within.
Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.
Mahatma Gandhi

In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.
Mahatma Gandhi

Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.
Mahatma Gandhi

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.
Mahatma Gandhi

There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations.
Mahatma Gandhi

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy and violence can ill go together.
Mahatma Gandhi

I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense.
Mahatma Gandhi

To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one's moral and intellectual bankruptcy.
Mahatma Gandhi

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.
Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest.
Mahatma Gandhi

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.
Mahatma Gandhi

Performance of one's duties should be independent of public opinion.
Mahatma Gandhi

The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts - that is where the battle should be fought.
Mahatma Gandhi

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.
Mahatma Gandhi

We must become the change we want to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi

What you do is of little significance, but it is very important that you do it.
Mahatma Gandhi

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
Mahatma Gandhi

I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.
Mahatma Gandhi

A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
Mahatma Gandhi

Retaliation is counter-poison and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of Love alone can destroy the poison of hate.
Mahatma Gandhi

Democracy means: Sticking to the rules of the game, even when the referee is not looking.
Manfred Hausmann

It is as hard for the good to suspect evil, as it is for the bad to suspect good.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead

We adore titles and heredities in our hearts and ridicule them with our mouths. This is our democratic privilege.
Mark Twain

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet

In actual fact those who do not care for politics and sit on the fence do indeed side for a political party: The ruling party.
Max Frisch

The dignity of man is in free choice.
Max Frisch

Any law which violates the indefeasible rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.
Maximilien Robespierre

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

To feed men and not to love them is to treat them as if they were barnyard cattle. To love them and not respect them is to treat them as if they were household pets.
Mencius, philosopher

The Constitution, in a very significant sense, is not a mechanism for making decisions but preventing them.
Michael Gilson De Lomos

If you are called upon to govern humans, treat them humanely.
Mikhail Kalinin

In democracy its your vote that counts.; In feudalism its your count that votes.
Mogens Jallberg

In democracy its your vote that counts. In feudalism its your count that votes.
Mogens Jallberg

It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do.
Moliere

Whatever field of human activity one may take, only those trends that are in harmony with the needs of society show rapid progress.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky

If an individual agrees with everybody, he lacks conviction; if he likes everybody and is everybody's friend, he is indifferent to one and all.
Nikolai Dobrolyubov

I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr

Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made.
Otto Von Bismark

Traditions are never left in peace: they degenerate if they are not perfected.
P. A. Pavlenko

Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
P.J. O’Rourke

Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
Plato

The history of any nation is not only a succession of events, but also a chain of ideas.
Pyotr Chaadayev

There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
Ralph Nader

Democracy feeds on argument, on the discussion as to the right way forward. This is the reason why respecting the opinion of others belongs to democracy.
Richard von Weizsacker

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
Robert Byrne

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope...build(ing) a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Robert F. Kennedy

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

So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.
Roger Baldwin, founder ACLU

The way to virtually eliminate genocide and mass murder appears to be through restricting and checking power. This means to foster democratic freedom.
Rudolph Rummel

Violence is the last resource of the incompetent.
Salvor Hardin

Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.
Senator Soaper

Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried.
Stuart Chase

The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.
Tacitus

Democracy means not "I am as good as you are" but "You are as good as I am.".
Theodore Parker

Restlessness and discontent are the first necessities of progress.
Thomas A. Edison

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty or civilization, or both.
Thomas Babington Macaulay

If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?
Thomas Henry Huxley

In a government bottomed on the will of all, the... liberty of every individual citizen becomes interesting to all.
Thomas Jefferson

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.
Thomas Jefferson

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

Laws provide against injury from others; but not from ourselves.
Thomas Jefferson

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.
Tom Stoppard

When the government fears the people, that is LIBERTY. When people fear the government, that is TYRANNY.
Unknown

When a nation's government becomes more fearful of its citizens' rights than protective of them, that nation's future is only despotism and extinction.
Unknown

The most serious threat to democracy is the notion that it has already been achieved.
Unknown

Creative ability and personal responsibility are strongest when the mind is free from supernatural belief and operates in an atmosphere of freedom and democracy.
Unknown

Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
Unknown

A great war always creates more scoundrels than it kills.
Unknown

He who fox-like got his rank is wolf-like in his office.
V. A. Zhukovsky

The right to be respected is won by respecting others.
Vassily Sukhomlinsky

Democracy is when you are not closed for being open.
Vlada Bulatovitch

People aren't angels woven of light, but neither are they beasts to be driven into stalls.
Vladimir Korolenko

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
William F. Buckley


Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom: it is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those others that have been
Winston Churchill

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
Winston Churchill