Democracy Quotes
Barack Obama and the Nigerian president Bola Tinubu have the most entries, with H. L. Mencken and Franklin Roosevelt behind them, so a lot of the page is speeches. For the dry material go to Mencken in Smart Set (1910), who called democracy the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard; Shaw’s Maxims for Revolutionists (1903), on election by the incompetent many instead of appointment by the corrupt few; and Disraeli’s Lothair (1870).
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch” is credited to Benjamin Franklin and flagged misattributed. The earliest version in the notes is a Usenet post from 23 April 1990. The line that democracy is the most vile form of government, credited to Madison, is flagged too.
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
We’d all like t’vote fer th’best man, but he’s never a candidate.
Eternal vigilance. Remember, no one said democracy would be easy.
Democracy finds its radical edge in the great revolutions of the past.
The world is weary of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
Democracy is on trial in the world, on a more colossal scale than ever before.
Democracy is a system where people are counted but not weighed.
Democracy is the great love of the failures and cowards of life.