Democracy Quotes

An institution in which the whole is equal to the scum of the parts.

Keith Preston (1884-1927)

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

E.B. White (1899-1985) American author, editor.

The most dangerous foe to truth and freedom in our midst is the compact majority, yes, the damned, compact, liberal majority.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) Norwegian dramatist.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) Scottish writer.

Nor is the people’s judgment always true;           

The most may err as grossly as the few.

Jophn Dryden (1631-1700) English poet, dramatist.

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage opf merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

W.R. Inge (1860-1954) Dean of St. Paul’s London.

It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.

Tom Stoppard (b.1937) British playwright.

When great changes occur is history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.

Eugene V. Debs (1855-1926) American socialist leader.

The majority never has the right on its side. Never I say! That is one of  the social lies that a free, thinking man is bond to rebel against. Who makes up the majority I nany given country? Is it true wise men or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible overwhelming majority, all the wide world over.

Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) Norwegian dramatist.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American president.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American president.

Two cheers for democracy; one because it admits variety and two because it permits criticism.

E.M. Forster (1879-1970) British novelist.

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)

The freeman, casting with unpurchased hand the vote that shakes the turrets of the land.

Dr. Olivr Wendell Holmes (1809-1894) American writer, physician.

The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) American president.

A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.

Whatever democracy may be theoretically, one is sometimes tempted to define it practically as standardized and commercialized melodrama.

Irving Babbitt (1865-1933)

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1970) Anglo-Irish playwright, critic.

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

Democracy which began by liberating man politically has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion.

Ludwig Lewisohn (1882-1956) American author, critic.

Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1968) British journalist.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.

H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) American journalist.