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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.

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Most quoted on democracy:

It is a stark truth: capitalism and democracy are fundamentally incompatible. While democratic governments, with elections and separation of powers, are a feature of capitalist societies, our understanding of democracy as one based on electoral processes is incomplete. Real democracy requires a modicum of economic agency, which the majority of people don't have.

Clara Mattei Escape from Capitalism: An Intervention (2026)

As "rule of the people" (the etymological root of democracy), democracy's underlying logic is essentially the unceasing movement of freedom making. And freedom, as we have seen, must be jettisoned in even the best of representative systems.

Cindy Milstein

The fascist arrangement tolerates the existence of no valid revolutionary activity. It has programmed into its very nature a massive, complex and automatic defense mechanism for all our old methods for raising the consciousness of a potentially revolutionary class of people. The essence of a U.S.A. totalitarian socio-political capitalism is concealed behind the illusion of a mass participatory society. We must rip away its mask. Then the debate can end, and we can enter a new phase of struggle based on the development of an armed revolutionary culture that will triumph.

George Jackson Blood in My Eye (1971)

When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It's a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.

John Kenneth Galbraith The Age of Uncertainty (1977)

I am of the opinion that all who can should vote for the most intelligent, honest, and conscientious men eligible to office, irrespective of former party opinions, who will endeavour to make the new constitutions and the laws passed under them as beneficial as possible to the true interests, prosperity, and liberty of all classes and conditions of the people.

Robert E. Lee

Sceptics and idlers think that their one vote will make no difference either way. They are wrong—wrong both in practice: some elections turn on mere handfuls of votes, as witness Al Gore’s fate in Florida—and in principle: for every refusal to vote is an act of self-disenfranchisement in which a citizen, betraying the endeavours of history, demotes himself into a serf.

A. C. Grayling Life, Sex, and Ideas: The Good Life Without God (2002)

Be it so that public error must have a place in human society, still, in the kingdom of God, we must look and listen only to his eternal truth, against which no series of years, no custom, no conspiracy, can plead prescription. Thus Isaiah formerly taught the people of God, “Say ye not, A confederacy, to all to whom this people shall say, A confederacy;” i.e. do not unite with the people in an impious consent.

John Calvin Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536)

If you do this, then you will find, as others have found before you, that the vote is the most powerful instrument ever devised by man for breaking down injustice and destroying the terrible walls which imprison men because they are different from other men.

Lyndon B. Johnson Voting Rights Act signing speech (1965)

But Lincoln also understood that after such a decision, a democracy should seek peace through a new unity. For a democracy can keep alive only if the settlement of old difficulties clears the ground and transfers energies to face new responsibilities. Never can it have as much ability and purpose as it needs in that striving; the end of battle does not end the infinity of those needs. That is why Lincoln — commander of a people as well as of an army — asked that his battle end "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

Franklin D. Roosevelt Address at the dedication of the memorial on the Gettysburg battlefield (1938)

As long as health ins & Big Pharma determine so much health care policy, gun manufacturers so much gun safety policy, oil & gas companies so much environmental policy & defense contractors so much defense policy, we’re functioning not as a democracy but as a corporate aristocracy

Marianne Williamson

Citizens of a Jeffersonian democracy can be as religious or irreligious as they please as long as they are not “fanatical.” That is, they must abandon or modify opinion on matters of ultimate importance, the opinions that may hitherto have given sense and point to their lives, if these opinions entail public actions that cannot be justified to most of their fellow citizens.

Richard Rorty Objectivity, Relativism and Truth (1991)

It is very significant that there has never been a war between genuine and universal democracies. There have been countless wars between totalitarian and authoritarian states. There have been wars between democracies and dictatorships - most often in defense of democratic values or in response to aggression.

F. W. de Klerk

The institutions which are democratic in form are in substance instruments of the dominant class interest. This is most obvious in the fact that so soon as democracy shows a disposition to deny its class character and to become an instrument of the real interest of the people, the democratic forms themselves are sacrificed.

Rosa Luxemburg

I have not the smallest doubt that, if we had a purely democratic government here, the effect would be the same. Either the poor would plunder the rich, and civilisation would perish; or order and property would be saved by a strong military government, and liberty would perish.

Thomas Babington Macaulay

We are very attached to describing ourselves as the Greeks described themselves; try persuading a friend that the United States is not really a democracy. But it is not clear that their ideals, and ambitions, and the assumptions embodied in that vocabulary, or the views on the best way to govern ourselves of those who created that vocabulary, make much sense in a world as different as ours.

Alan Ryan On Politics: A History of Political Thought: From Herodotus to the Present (2012)

As I’ve said many times before, true democracy is a project that’s much bigger than any one of us. It’s bigger than any one person, any one president, any one government. It’s a job for all of us. It requires everyday sustained effort from all of us — the work of perfecting our union is never finished. We look forward to joining you in that effort as fellow citizens.

Barack Obama

the change is at hand-the old order is cracking. It has been said that 'the cure for democracy is more democracy'

Art Young Art Young: His Life and Times (1939)

One of the insidious facts about totalitarianism is its seeming "efficiency." …Democracy — with all of its inefficiency — is still the best system we have so far for enhancing the prospects of our mutual survival.

Neil Postman Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)

Men in the mass never brook the destructive discussion of their fundamental beliefs, and that impatience is naturally most evident in those societies in which men in the mass are most influential. Democracy and free speech are not facets of one gem; democracy and free speech are eternal enemies.

H. L. Mencken

If this democracy is to survive, it is imperative that the judiciary as an institution and judges as individuals are not only impartial to those who appear before them but also that the wider public have the confidence that cases affecting their well-being will be decided fairly and in accordance with the law.

Olusegun Adeniyi

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