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If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters?

— George Bernard Shaw Man and Superman (1903)

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Democracy

More quotes by George Bernard Shaw

Love is an appetite which, like all other appetites, is destroyed for the moment by its gratification.

Getting Married (1908)

Must then a Christ perish in torment in every age to save those that have no imagination?

Saint Joan (1923)

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who havnt and dont.

The Apple Cart (1928)

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

The Philanderer (1893)

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