democracy quotes

Democracy quotes.

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” – Bertrand Russell

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” – Winston S. Churchill

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.” – Gore Vidal

“In a democracy the majority of citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority…and that oppression of the majority will extend to far great number, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single sceptre. Under a cruel prince they have the plaudits of the people to animate their generous constancy under their sufferings; but those who are subjected to wrong under multitudes are deprived of all external consolation: they seem deserted by mankind, overpowered by a conspiracy of their whole species.” – Edmund Burke

“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.” – Noam Chomsky

“Does history record any case in which the majority was right?” – Robert A. Heinlein

“In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organised greed always defeats disorganised democracy.” – Matt Taibbi

“In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.” – Thucydides