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Money, money, always money — that is the essence of democracy. Democracy is more expensive than monarchy; it is incompatible with liberty.

— Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

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Democracy

More quotes by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

All men in their hearts, I say, bear witness to these truths; they need only to be made to understand it.

What is Property? (1840)

All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism.

Philosophy at Work : A Constructive Approach to Philosophy (1960)

To name a thing is easy: the difficulty is to discern it before its appearance.

What is Property? (1840)

As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

What is Property? (1840)

Talents is a creation of society rather than a gift of nature; it is an accumulated capital of which the recipient is only the guardian.

What is Property? (1840)

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