Democracies Have Quotes - Page 3

Democracy has proved only that the best way to gain power over people is to assure the people that they are ruling themselves. Once they believe that, they make wonderfully submissive slaves.

When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.

No democracy has ever long survived the failure of its adherents to be ready to die for it. My own conviction is this, the people must either go on or go under.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

Democracy is the menopause of Western society, the Grand Climacteric of the body social. Fascism is its middle-aged lust.

The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance. The growth of democracy; the growth of corporate power; and the growth of corporate propaganda against democracy.

Dictatorships are one-way streets. Democracy boasts two-way traffic.

Efforts to bring about democracy have hit a wall and are going backwards.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

Democracy has many definitions, but what's in it for me is not an element of any of them.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until a majority of voters discover that they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury.

Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.

In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.

Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival.

Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.

Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.

Democracy, by its very nature, can't be imposed on people. Democracy has to be the people deciding for themselves.

I don't like the current political system in the USA and some other countries. Increasingly democracy has been hijacked by corporate interests.