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Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

— Immanuel Kant

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Democracy

More quotes by Immanuel Kant

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

Apart from moral conduct, all that man thinks himself able to do in order to become acceptable to God is mere superstition and religious folly.

There must be a seed of every good thing in the character of men, otherwise no one can bring it out.

The Educational Theory of Immanuel Kant (1904)

Natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion.

Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786)

That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt.

Critique of Pure Reason (1781)

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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

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