quotations about democracy
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Maxims for Revolutionists
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
ROBERT HUTCHINS
attributed, The Education of Modern Man
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
speech, May 19, 1856
The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.
BARACK OBAMA
press conference, Feb. 9, 2009
Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Stranger in a Strange Land
The idea of representative democracy will change. Today, we claim we don't use direct democracy because it would be impractical to poll everybody on every issue. The truth is that we use representative democracy because we want to get an above-average group to think through problems and make choices that, in the short term, might not be obvious--even if they are to everybody's benefit over the long term.
BILL GATES
Playboy, Jul. 1994
There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.
RALPH NADER
attributed, You Can Still Change the World
Debate is never finished; it can't be, lest democracy be no longer democratic and society be stripped of or forfeit its autonomy. Democracy means that the citizen's task is never complete. Democracy exists through persevering and unyielding citizens' concern. Once that concern is put to sleep, democracy expires.
ZYGMUNT BAUMAN
Europe: An Unfinished Adventure
The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Fifty Years of Indian Parliament
Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.
H.L. MENCKEN
attributed, The Conservators
The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.
ARISTOTLE
Politics
Democracy is not a scheme of voting, a plan for securing rulers; it is a spirit.
FRANK CRANE
Four Minute Essays
The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.
EDWARD ABBEY
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness
Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech, Nov. 11, 1947
Democracy is a system that gives people a chance to elect rascals of their own choice.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, Great Sayings and Quotations
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule -- and both commonly succeed, and are right.
H.L. MENCKEN
attributed, Return of the Portable Curmudgeon
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
OSCAR WILDE
The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Democracy is a difficult art of government, demanding of its citizens high ratios of courage and literacy, and at the moment we lack both the necessary habits of mind and a sphere of common reference.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
Lights
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.
E.B. WHITE
The New Yorker, 1943
Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.
SAUL ALINSKY
Reveille for Radicals