Quotes about Democracy

To change our laws and culture, the green movement must attract and include the majority of all people, not just the majority of affluent people.

Despots can hide behind the word democracy, they can hide behind rigged elections, but they can't hide behind the actions they take that limit liberty. It's all about the liberty thing...not the democracy thing. If liberty is being devalued, limited, decreased or otherwise compromised then we have to scrutinize the leadership for what they are doing. Bottom line, those who limit liberty are no friends to freedom.

My political ideal is democracy.  Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.

Representative government has broken down. Our politicians represent not the people who vote for them but the commercial interests who finance their election campaigns. We have the best politicians money can buy.

American democracy is a chess-game in which pawns imagine themselves to be free individuals with wills of their own: that delusion is one of the rules of the game, without which the game could not continue. I doubt anyone, no matter how sharp and sharp-tongued, could succeed in getting across to high school students how vital an acute mind is for just keeping a grip on one's life and earnings in our mendacious politics and economics. No wonder our school system is devoutly dedicated to demoralizing and blunting such minds.

" You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives it's assimilated conformists"

For we must consider that we shall be a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.

The corporate workplace, where people are kept in thrall, where total commitment is the norm, where people are stripped off their identity and have to adapt a code of conduct. This is the very antithesis of democracy. -.-

-WE HAVE A PSEUDO DEMOCRACY THAT IS ACTUALLY INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE FASCISM MASQUERADING. -Horowitz-

To the Greeks not just slaves had to be excluded from the democratic franchise and public debate but also merchants, bankers, all money-grubbing banausoi, because any society stupid enough to entrust its ultimate values to be determined by the caste of utilitarians deserves fully what it gets. It would be like entrusting our sports to couch potatoes and paraplegics. Such a foolish society would get what we have in fact got, a civilization too fucking stupid to realize how hard cultural, political, spiritual and philosophical cripples labor to cripple everyone else to become just like them.

The politics of envy is the politics of this commandment: "Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote." It is the politics of two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

What is true, just, and beautiful is not determined by popular vote. The masses everywhere are ignorant, short-sighted, motivated by envy, and easy to fool. Democratic politicians must appeal to these masses in order to be elected. Whoever is the best demagogue will win. Almost by necessity, then, democracy will lead to the perversion of truth, justice and beauty.

The institution of the democratic State is a remarkable example of modern idolatry. By ritually celebrating elections that are played out like a great social mass, the State allows us to participate in a religion that will influence the idol in our favour. If we make the idol an offering of the right ballot, it will bring us security, lifetime employment, a guaranteed pension, free medical care, environmental protection and a good school for our children. All these favours will rain down on us. We will not have to do anything to earn them. What could be more magical than that belief?

Democratic law does not say, "Thou shalt not kill". Instead, it designates certain people who have the right to kill -- soldiers and State police. Democratic law does not order, "Thou shalt not steal". It says that only certain people have the right to steal -- tax and customs agents. What does "power to the people" mean when the people enjoy fewer rights than their supposed servants?

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fi fty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

So long as we admit that the property of individuals lies at the mercy of the largest number of votes, we are intellectually and morally committed to state socialism.

Money power cannot be separated from democratic power without miscarriage and ensuing frustration - political and economic. Democracy implies the sovereignty of man; and, since man cannot be sovereign without the money power, there can not be democracy under the political money system.

it must be made clear again that the idea of democracy is immoral as well as uneconomical.

Even the Founding Fathers of the U.S., nowadays considered the model of a democracy, were strictly opposed to it. Without a single exception, they thought of democracy as nothing but mob-rule.

"...when a nation encourages the individual pursuit of happiness,  there is no guarantee that everyone is going to like what everyone else  is doing. That is part of freedom—tolerance of diversity."

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.  Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

The only real prison is fear, and the only real
freedom is freedom from fear.

We will surely get to our destination if we join hands.

I was elected by the aliens to rule Earth.

"There is not such a cradle of democracy upon the earth as the Free Public Library, this republic of letters, where neither rank, office, nor wealth receives the slightest consideration."

"The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history,
whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."

Desperate courage makes One a majority.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How's that again? I missed something. Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again too. Who decides?

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

At the close of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on September 18, 1787, a Mrs. Powell anxiously awaited the results, and as Benjamin Franklin emerged from the long task now finished, she asked him directly: "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Franklin replied, "A republic, if you can keep it."