 |
 | "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can
only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
largesse form the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the
public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over
loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the
world?s greatest civilizations has been 200 years." | |
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Alexander Tyler
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| "A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no
property, and vulgar employments." | |
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Aristotle
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| "All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation
ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish
it." | |
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Alexis de Tocqueville
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|
| "Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word,
equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in
liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." | |
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Charles Alexis Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
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|
| "Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better
than we deserve." | |
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George Bernard Shaw
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|
| "Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder
aloud what the country could do under first-class management." | |
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Senator Soaper
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| "Democracy is a process, not a static condition. It is Becoming,
rather than being. It can easily be lost, but never is fully won. Its
essence is eternal struggle." | |
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William H. Hastie
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| "Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by
Jackasses." | |
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Henry Louis Mencken
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| "Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and
intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself
with reason and justice." | |
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Harry S. Truman
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| "Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are
worse." | |
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Jawaharlal Nehru
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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." | |
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Archibald MacLeish
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| "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the
people are fight more than half of the time." | |
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E. B. White
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| "Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective
if you can stop people talking." | |
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Clement Atlee
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| "Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people
for the people." | |
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Oscar Wilde
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| "Every man is wanted, and no man is wanted much." | |
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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|
| "I know of no safe repository for the ultimate powers of society but
the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to
take it from them, but to increase their discretion by education." | |
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Thomas Jefferson
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|
| "I know that all things considered, the United States of America,
with all of its abuses of democracy and of liberty itself, is still the
garden spot of the world, where peace, cooperation and constructive effort
can and should prevail always and the cause of a higher Christian
civilization advanced." | |
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George M. Verity
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|
| "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." | |
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James William Fulbright
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|
| "It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion
for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their
tyranny." | |
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James Fenimore Cooper
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|
| "Man"s capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man"s
inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary." | |
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Reinhold Niebuhr
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| "Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands
not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all
in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors
talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on
grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public
life, so we carry the same spirit into our daily relations with one
another.... Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public
acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the
restraint of reverence; we are obedient to whomsoever is set in authority,
and to the laws, more sepecially to those which offer protection to the
oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings
admitted shame. lb. II, Funeral Oration of Pericles, 37" | |
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Thucydides
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| "Puritanism, believing itself quick with the seed of religious
liberty, laid, without knowing it, the egg of democracy." | |
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James Russell Lowell
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| "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and
murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit
suicide." | |
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John Adams
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| "So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight
for their rights, we"ll be called a democracy." | |
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Roger Nash Baldwin
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|
| "Some of us have turned our freedom into exploitation, our land into
a dust bowl. We can"t make a nation strong when it is held together by the
rotten rope of self-interest. Too often we think of democracy only in terms
of getting our rights." | |
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Joseph R. Sizoo, D.D.
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|
| "Sometimes democracy must be bathed in blood." | |
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Augusto Pinochet
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| "That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and
that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not
perish from the earth." | |
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Abraham Lincoln
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|
| "The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation
with the average voter." | |
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Sir Winston Churchill
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|
| "The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by
men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such
wisdom as God gives mankind ? men and women who are just, and
understanding, and generous to others ? men and women who are capable of
disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule
themselves." | |
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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| "The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from
ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and
undernourishment." | |
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Robert Maynard Hutchins
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| "The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a
chance to do something stupid." | |
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Art Spander
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| "The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of
all." | |
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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| "The world must be made safe for democracy." | |
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Woodrow Wilson
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|
| "To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the
citizens of a democracy." | |
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Bertrand Russell
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| "Too many people expect wonders from democracy when the most
wonderful thing of all is just having it." | |
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Walter Winchell
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| "We love your adherence to democratic principles." | |
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William F. Buckley, Jr.
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