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DEMOCRACY

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DEMOCRACY

see: "CAPITALISM"
see: "COMMUNISM"
see: "POLITICS"
see: "SOCIALISM"
see: "TYRANNY"
see: "VOTING"
see "FREEDOM" for other related links


Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts,
and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not
commit suicide.
--John Adams (1735—1826)
First VP and second President of the United States.
Letter [15 April 1814], in
_The Works of John Adams_ [1851], vol. 6.

-

A democracy is a government in the hands of men
of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.
--Aristotle (384—322 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.


Democracy arose from men's thinking that
if they were equal in any respect, they were
equal absolutely.
--Aristotle (384—322 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.

-

When I wrote in the late fifties that I would sooner be
governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston
telephone directory than by the faculty of Harvard I
intended more than a flippancy. The failure of the human
being to incline to virtue even while acknowledging it
as such can wreck lives and condemn individual souls.
But the temptation to play out such temptations on a
large scale invites involvement with power in so many
men who spend their professional lives tending to the
cloistered standards of scholarship. I have concluded
that Tocqueville was correct in stating that the strength
of our republic—read, any republic—lies in the total
deposit of common sense, instrumental and ethical.
Democracy isn't a guarantor of sound government, merely
of consensus. But if the consensus is of the uninformed,
or of the defiantly misinformed, then democracy will
give you a Juan Perón and the result will be the relative
destruction of a once thriving country, all in the name
of populism.
--William F. Buckley Jr. (1925—2008)
American author and journalist.
"Testamentary Ruminations",
_Living Philosophies:
The Reflections of Some Eminent Men and Women of Our Time_ [1990].

Democracy is buying a big house you can't afford
with money you don't have to impress people you
wish were dead.
--Johnny Carson (1925—2005)
American comedian and host of The Tonight Show [1962—1992].

-

Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried
in this world of sin and woe. 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.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].
Speech, House of Commons [11 November 1947].


The best argument against democracy is a five-minute
conversation with the average voter.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].


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.
--Winston Churchill (1874—1965)
British Conservative statesman and
Prime Minister [1940—1945, 1951—1955].

-

The Ship of Democracy, which has weathered
all storms, may sink through the mutiny of
those on board.
--Grover Cleveland (1837—1908)
22nd [1885-1889] and 24th [1893—1897]
President of the U.S..
In a letter to Wilson S. Bissell [15 February 1894].

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 (1789—1851)
American novelist.
_The American Democrat_ [1838]

The defeat of Nazism has removed one of the obstacles to the
democratization of Germany; but it has not created a democratic
Germany," wrote Dulles. "Nor is there much basis for the belief
that democracy will develop in Germany under present conditions
of defeat, hunger, idleness and despair."
--a report from the April 1947 issue of the magazine
_Foreign Affairs_, in which future CIA chief Allen W. Dulles
complained that prospects for democratic reforms in
postwar Germany looked bleak.

The price of democratic survival in a world of
aggressive totalitarianism is to give up some
of the democratic luxuries of the past.
--J. William Fulbright (1905—1995)
American politician.
"American Foreign Policy in the 20th Century
Under an 18th Century Constitution,"
_Cornell Law Quarterly_ [Fall 1961]

-

The voice of the people has been said to be the
voice of God; and, however generally this maxim
has been quoted and believed, it is not true to
fact. The people are turbulent and changing,
they seldom judge or determine right.
--Alexander Hamilton (1755or57—1804)
New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention,
major author of the _Federalist Papers_, and first
secretary of the Treasury of the United States [1789—1795].
In a speech at the Constitutional Convention [18 June 1787].


It has been observed that a pure democracy, if it were
practicable, would be the most perfect government.
Experience has proved that no position is more false
than this. The ancient democracies, in which the
people themselves deliberated, never possessed
one feature of good govenment. Their very character
was tyranny; their figure deformity.
--Alexander Hamilton (1755or57—1804)
New York delegate to the Constitutional Convention,
major author of the _Federalist Papers_, and first
secretary of the Treasury of the United States [1789—1795].
In a speech in Congress [21 June 1788].

-

Ostracism was one of the ways in which Athenian democracy was
expressed, and involved banishing for ten years any prominent citizen
who had become unpopular. On a day appointed for the vote, the Agora
was enclosed by a fence and all those citizens who wanted to take part
were admitted by one of ten entrances. They handed to an official a pot-
sherd with the name of a man they wished to see banished written on it.
When all the potsherds had been collected, they were counted and, pro-
vided there were over six thousand of them, the man whose name
appeared most was ostracised. He had to leave the city within ten days;
but, after the ten years of his exile were over, he could return without
either disgrace or curtailment of his rights as a citizen.

--Christopher Hibbert _Cities and Civilizations_ [2003 ed.]
Ch. 2 "Athens in the Days of Pericles 480-404 BC"

-

In contrast to totalitarianism, democracy can
face and live with the truth about itself.
--Sidney Hook (1902—1989)
American educator and social philosopher.
In the _New York Times Magazine_ [30 September 1951].

While democracy must have its organization and
controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.
--Charles Evans Hughes (1862—1948)
American professor of law, politician, and Chief Justice
of the Supreme Court [1930—1941].

I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me.
--Langston Hughes (1902—1967)
American writer and poet.
"The Black Man Speaks"
in _Jim Crow's Last Stand_ [1943].

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 Maynard Hutchins (1899—1977)
American philosopher.
_Great Books_ [1954]

-

...Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood-pulp, of modern printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by the state. In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and the concentration of communication power in the hands of a few big concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government propaganda; but certainly it is not something of
which a Jeffersonian democrat could possibly approve.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies — the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.

...Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time, not on the spot, not here and now and in the calculable future, but somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those who would manipulate
and control it.

In their propaganda today's dictators rely for the most part on repetition, suppression and rationalization — the repetition of catchwords which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization of passions which may be used in the interests of the Party or the State. As the art and science of manipulation come to be better understood, the dictators
of the future will doubtless learn to combine these techniques with the non-stop distractions which, in the West, are now threatening to drown in a sea of irrelevance
the rational propaganda essential to the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic institutions.

--Aldous Huxley (1894—1963)
English novelist {grandson of T.H. Huxley}.
_Brave New World Revisited_ [1958],
ch. 4 "Propaganda in a Democratic Society"

-

Should things go wrong at any time, the people will
set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their
elective rights.
--Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826)
American statesman and president [1801—1809].
John P. Foley (ed.) _The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia_ [1900], p. 842

And so the chauvinists of all times and places go their appointed
way; plucking the easy fruits, reaping the little triumphs of the
day at the expense of someone else tomorrow, deluging in noise
and filth anyone who gets in their way, dancing their reckless
dance on the prospect for human progress, drawing the shadow
of a great doubt over the validity of democratic institutions. And
until peoples learn to spot the fanning of mass emotions and the
sowing of bitterness, suspicion, and intolerance as crimes in
themselves—as perhaps the greatest disservice that can be done
to the cause of popular government—this sort of thing will
continue to occur.
--George Frost Kennan (1904—2005)
Ambassador to the USSR in 1952, and
to Yugoslavia from 1961 to 1963 and
chief architect of the U.S. Cold War
policy of containment and deterrence
against communism.
_American Diplomacy, 1900—1950_ [1951]

Vietnam presumably taught us that the United States
could not serve as the world's policeman; it should also
have taught us the dangers of trying to be the world's
midwife to democracy when the birth is scheduled to
take place under conditions of guerilla war.
--Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926—2006)
American Conservative political scientist,
professor, author, and the first woman to
serve as the American Ambassador to the
United Nations.
"Dictatorship and Double Standards"
_Commentary_ magazine [November 1979].

Democracy does not guarantee equality of
conditions — it only guarantees equality of
opportunity.
--Irving Kristol (1920— )
American founder of the neoconservative movement.

On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy
has given the ordinary worker more dignity than he
ever had.
--Sinclair Lewis (1885—1951)
American novelist and playwright.
_It Can't Happen Here_ [1935]

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the
proposition that all men are created equal. . . . we here highly
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this
nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that
government of the people, by the people, for the people shall
not perish from the earth.
(The Lincoln Memorial inscription reads
"by the people, for the people.")
--Abraham Lincoln (1809—1865)
American Republican statesman, President [1861—1865].
Address at the Dedication of the National Cemetery
at Gettysburg [19 November 1863].

Democracy gives every man
The right to be his own oppressor.
--James Russell Lowell (1819—1891)
American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat.
_The Biglow Papers_ Second Series [1867]

In a democracy the people meet and exercise the government
in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by
their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently,
will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended
over a large region.
--James Madison (1751—1836)
Fourth president of the United States [1809—1817].
_The Federalist_ No. 14 [1787—1788]

Democracy is sand driven by the wind.
--Benito Mussolini (1883—1945)
Italian Fascist dictator.
As related by William Manchester in
_The Glory And The Dream_, p.177.

Democracy is good. I say this because other
systems are worse.
--Jawaharlal Nehru (1889—1964)
Indian statesman.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible,
but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy
necessary.
--Reinhold Niebuhr (1892—1971)
American theologian.
_Children of Light and Children of Darkness_ [1944]

This is what I call the American idea. . . . This idea
demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a
democracy—that is, a government of all the people,
by all the people, for all the people.
--Theodore Parker (1810—1860)
American preacher and abolitionist.
In a speech in Boston [29 May 1850].
(Parker used this phrase in several speeches
and is thought to have inspired Abraham
Lincoln's use of it in the Gettysburg Address - GBAQ.)

-

The American system is not a democracy. It is a
constitutional republic. A democracy, if you attach
meaning to terms, is a system of unlimited majority
rule; the classic example is ancient Athens. And
the symbol of it is the fate of Socrates, who was
put to death legally, because the majority didn't
like what he was saying, although he had initiated
no force and had violated no one's rights.

Democracy, in short, is a form of collectivism, which
denies individual rights: the majority can do whatever
it wants with no restrictions. In principle, the
democratic government is all-powerful. Democracy
is a totalitarian manifestation; it is not a form
of freedom....

The American system is a constitutionally limited
republic, restricted to the protectrion of individual
rights. In such a system, majority rule is applicable
only to lesser details, such as the selection of certain
personnel. But the majority has no say over the basic
principles governing the government. It has no power
to ask for or gain the infringement of individual
rights.

--Leonard Peikoff (1933— )
Canadian-born American philosopher.
_The Philosophy of Objectivism_, Lecture 9 [1976]

-

Democracy, which is a charming form of government,
full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort
of equality to equals and unequals alike.
--Plato (427?—347 B.C.)
Greek philosopher.
_The Republic_, Book VIII. 558

-

It stands to reason that where there's sacrifice, there's
someone collecting sacrificial offerings. Where there's
service, there's someone being served. The man who
speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters.
And intends to be the master. But if you ever hear a man
telling you that you must be happy, that it's your natural
right, that your first duty is to yourself—that will be the
man who's not after your soul.
--Ayn Rand (1905—1982)
Russian-born American writer.
_The Fountainhead_ [1943]

On account of us being a democracy and run by the
people, we are the only nation in the world that has
to keep a government four years, no matter what it
does.
--Will Rogers [William Penn Adair Rogers] (1879—1935)
American humorist and actor.

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
--Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882—1945)
American Democratic statesman and President [1933—1945].
"Fireside Chat" radio broadcast [29 December 1940].

-

Democracy is a device that insures we shall
be governed no better than we deserve.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist
propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1925.


Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent
many for appointment by the corrupt few.
--George Bernard Shaw (1856—1950)
Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, Socialist
propagandist, and winner of the Nobel Prize
for Literature in 1925.
_Man and Superman_ [1905]

-

The central tenet of statesmanship in a democracy
is unless the people understand it and participate
in it, no long-term program can endure.
--Adlai E. Stevenson (1900—1965)
American Democratic politician.
In a speech in Newark, New Jersey [5 May 1959].

-

Americans acquire the habit of always considering
themselves as standing alone, and they are apt
to imagine that their whole destiny is in their own
hands. Thus not only does democracy make every man
forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants, and
separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him
back upon himself alone, and threatens in the end
to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own
heart.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.
_Democracy in America_ [1835—1840]


What is most important for democracy is not that
great fortunes should not exist, but that great
fortunes should not remain in the same hands. In
that way there are rich men, but they do not form
a class.
--Alexis de Tocqueville (1805—1859)
French historian and politician.
_Democracy in America_ [1835—1840], vol. 2
tr. Henry Reeve and Francis Bowen [1862].

-

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more
than half the people are right more than half
of the time.
--E.B. [Elwyn Brooks] White (1899—1985)
American essayist and literary stylist.
_The Wild Flag_ [1946]

-

The beauty of a democracy is that you never can tell
when a youngster is born what he is going to do with
himself, and that no matter how humbly he is born,
no matter where he is born, no matter what circum-
stances hamper him at the outset, he has a chance
to master the minds and lead the imagintions of
the whole country.
--Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].
In a speech to the Chamber of Commerce,
Columbus, Ohio [10 December 1915].


But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for
the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts —
for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to
have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties
of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert
of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and
make the world itself at last free.
--Woodrow Wilson (1856—1924)
American Democratic statesman and President [1913—1921].
Address to Congress [2 April 1917].

-

Too many people expect wonders from
democracy, when the most wonderful
thing of all is just having it.
--Walter Winchell (1897—1972)
American journalist.


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