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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:

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

Immanuel Kant

All the experience the Chinese people have accumulated through several decades teaches us to enforce the people's democratic dictatorship, that is, to deprive the reactionaries of the right to speak and let the people alone have that right.

Mao Zedong

The most opulent citizens of a democracy will not show tastes very different from those of the people, whether having come from within the people, they really share them, or whether they believe they ought to submit to them.

Alexis de Tocqueville

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

Isaac Asimov

The true democracy, living and growing and inspiring, puts its faith in the people — faith that the people will not simply elect men who will represent their views ably and faithfully, but will also elect men who will exercise their conscientious judgment — faith that the people will not condemn those whose devotion to principle leads them to unpopular courses, but will reward courage, respect honor, and ultimately recognize right.

John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage (1956)

[T]he only mark-to-market thing in politics is Election Day; everything else is hot air.

Mike Murphy Interview with Bill Kristol (2018)

From Machiavelli to the present, thinkers have distinguished between the adept elite and the incompetent many. We may think that anyone who draws such a distinction and in such terms can be no friend to democracy; that is not true.

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

A study of the inter-American system published by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London concluded that, while the US pays lip service to democracy, the real commitment is to "private, capitalist enterprise." When the rights of investors are threatened, democracy has to go; if these rights are safeguarded, killers and torturers will do just fine.

Noam Chomsky

As during the time of kings it would have been naive to think that the king’s firstborn son would be the fittest to rule, so in our time it is naive to think that the democratically elected ruler will be the fittest. The rule of succession is not a formula for identifying the best ruler, it is a formula for conferring legitimacy on someone or other and thus forestalling civil conflict.

J. M. Coetzee Diary of a Bad Year (2007)

The capitalist class is represented by the Republican, Democratic, Populist and Prohibition parties, all of which stand for private ownership of the means of production, and the triumph of any one of which will mean continued wage-slavery to the working class.

Eugene V. Debs The Socialist Party and the Working Class (1904)

The 20th century has been characterized by four developments of great importance: the growth of political democracy, the growth of Online Democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.

Alex Carey

We should have total public funding of federal campaigns. That is the only way to get the dark money out of politics. As president that will be my first piece of legislation to submit because the undue influence of money on our politics is the cancer underlying all other cancers.

Marianne Williamson

Democracy is spreading across the world. Democracy is only possible with easy access to information and good communications. And technology is a way of facilitating communications.

Tom Clancy Schafer interview (1995)

In the linguistic usage of the Left, "democratic" denotes much more frequently highly negative values. Everybody is acquainted with the real meaning of such expressions as "making democracy work in the classroom" which just stands for lack of discipline, or "democratizing literature" which means plain trash.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn The Menace of the Herd (1943)

The purpose of capitalist democracy is to provide a favorable situation for the exercise of free enterprise and not for the planning of a society that will make business a social service. If the commonality attempts to take the latter view of democracy and to implement it, the capitalist will quickly scrap the institution.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.

Edmund Burke Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

The vote should really be the expression of a concrete will, the choice of a representative capable of defending, within the general framework of the country and the world, the particular interests of his electors.

Simone de Beauvoir

The proletariat cannot vote for socialism in a bourgeois parliament because the capitalists will not permit themselves to be destroyed by their own instrument. The machinery of the capitalist state has been fashioned by the bourgeoisie to suit the needs of their class; therefore, in the achievement of its ends, the working class must contrive its own institutions.

Oliver Cox Caste, Class, and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (1948)

Many forms of Government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters.

Winston Churchill

For in a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, 'hold office'; everyone of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.

John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage (1956)

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