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My own contempt for the wild & mischievous system of Democracy will not suffer me to believe without positive proof that it can be adopted by any man of a sound understanding and historical experience.

— Edward Gibbon

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Source: Letter to John Gillies (24 June 1793), quoted in The Letters of Edward Gibbon: Volume Three 1784–1794, Letters 619–878, ed. J. E. Norton (1956), pp. 337
Source quality: Secondhand citation Quoted from another book or article rather than from the original.

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