In a democracy ...someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

As quoted in A Historical Commentary on Thucydides: A Companion to Rex Warner’s Penguin Translation, David Cartwright/Rex Warner, University of Michigan Press (1997), p. 298: ISBN 0472084194 | In the Richard Crawley translation, this quote is rendered as follows: "[...] under a democracy a disappointed candidate accepts his defeat more easily, because he has not the humiliation of being beaten by his equals."