Skip to content

Today we are witnessing the triumph of a hyperdemocracy in which the mass acts directly, outside the law, imposing its aspirations and its desires by means of material pressure.

— José Ortega y Gasset

Another quote →

Topics

Democracy

More quotes by José Ortega y Gasset

Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us — by obligations, not by rights.

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness.

The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.

History as a System (1962)

Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations. The former is exclusive in tendency, the latter inclusive.

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

The Revolt of the Masses (1929)

All José Ortega y Gasset quotes →

You may also like

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