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Democracy is a freak condition in the world's history: civil liberties are not common liberties even today, and most people in the world have never possessed them.

— Geoffrey Blainey The Great Seesaw: A New View of the Western World, 1750-2000 (1988)

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Democracy

More quotes by Geoffrey Blainey

In a democracy, all voters are equal but not all are responsible. Compulsory voting ignores that elemental truth.

Innovation is usually not a gigantic step but a series of small jumps involving various enterprising people whose names are soon forgotten.

The Story of Australia's People: The Rise and Rise of a New Australia (2016)

Whether we like the idea or not, war has again and again been seen as the great auditor, the special testing time, of a nation's strength and fibre.

In economics, as in politics, no national reservoir can stand the strain when everyone is turning on the taps and few are bothering to see that the catchments to the reservoir are working.

Eye on Australia: Speeches and Essays of Geoffrey Blainey (1991)

Christianity has both spurred and retarded the sciences and social sciences. Indeed, most of the modern debates of profound significance were originally dialogues with or within Christianity.

A Short History of Christianity (2011)

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

Mikhail Gorbachev

The oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!

Vladimir Lenin The State and Revolution (1917)

The law itself is the instrument of the ruling class; hence it is a logical impossibility for another class to assume power legally.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

Gustave Flaubert

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Geoffrey Blainey (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.