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The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
-Lord (John Emerich Edward Dalberg) Acton
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Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing. Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the People, who have... a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible, divine right to that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean the characters and conduct of their rulers. There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free 'government' ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. Liberty cannot be preserved without general knowledge among people.
-John Adams
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So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.
-Roger Baldwin
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Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you're told.
-Dave Barry
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Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.
-Jean Baudrillard
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The worst thing I can say about democracy is that it has tolerated the Right Honorable Gentleman for four and a half years.
-Aneurin Bevan
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We once worried that democracy could not survive if an undereducated populace knew too little. Now we worry if it can survive us knowing too much.
-Robert Bianco
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The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
-William F. Buckley
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In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority...and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.
-Edmund Burke
Reflections on the Revolution in France, 1790
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Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
-G. K. Chesterton
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Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man walking into the little booth with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper. No amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point.
-Sir Winston Churchill
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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.
-Sir Winston Churchill, Speech in the House of Commons, November 11, 1947
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The ship of Democracy, which has weathered all storms, may sink through the mutiny of those aboard.
-Grover Cleveland
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It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
-James Fenimore Cooper
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The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
-James Fenimore Cooper
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Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear.
-Alan Coren
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When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
-Eugene Debs
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Democracy don't rule the world, you better get that in your head; this world is ruled by violence, but I guess that's better left unsaid.
-Bob Dylan
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Two cheers for Democracy: one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.
-E. M. Forster
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Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.
-Harry Emerson Fosdick
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In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
-J. William Fulbright
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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
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Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather Boa!
-Allen Ginsberg
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The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.
-Mikhail Gorbachev
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Books about Democracy
