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The way you can tell there’s democracy going on is that nothing gets done.

— John Barnes A Million Open Doors (1992)

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Democracy

More quotes by John Barnes

Papa always says there’s room for everyone, but some people certainly take theirs up without making it interesting.

Orbital Resonance (1991)

The only thing Carla has ever learned to like about dealing with power is how easy it is to embarrass people who have it.

Mother of Storms (1994)

I burst into tears. It’s the best defense ever found against well-meaning people who are telling you something stupid “for your own good.”

Orbital Resonance (1991)

Silence, like all good things, was at its best and costliest when absolutely pure, and it never paid to skimp on it.

The Lost Princess Man (2009)

How he must have been astonished to see people behaving decently when what they believed was absolute anathema to him.

A Million Open Doors (1992)

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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: John Barnes (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.