Democracy Quotes – Reflections on Political Structures

"Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.... The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance."

Alexis De Tocqueville

"Everything suggests that declining electoral participation in the capitalist democracies is a sign not of contentment but of resignation. The losers from the neoliberal turn cannot see what they might get from a change of government; the TINA (‘There is no alternative’) politics of ‘globalization’ has long arrived at the bottom of society where voting no longer makes a difference in the eyes of those who would have most to gain from political change. The less hope they invest in elections, the less those who can afford to rely on the market have to fear from political intervention. The political resignation of the underclasses consolidates the neoliberal turn from which it derives, further shielding capitalism from democracy."

Wolfgang Streeck

"The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."

Winston Churchill

"Whether for good or evil, it is sadly inevitable that all political leadership requires the artifices of theatrical illusion. In the politics of a democracy, the shortest distance between two points is often a crooked line."

Arthur Miller

"Democracy is the paradise of ranters, windbags, phrase-mongers, flatterers, and parasites, who obstruct the path of every genuine talent and merit far more than occurs under any other form of government."

Eduard von Hartmann

"The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn't represent the people. It controls them."

John Lennon

"In a democracy the people choose a leader in whom they trust. Then the chosen leader says, 'Now shut up and obey me.' People and party are then no longer free to interfere in his business."

Max Weber

"For the majority of people liberty means only the system and the administrators they are used to."

Albert Jay Nock

"Democracy allows for A and B to band together to rip off C. This is not justice, but a moral outrage."

Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"Every time I hear a political speech or I read those of our leaders, I am horrified at having, for years, heard nothing which sounded human. It is always the same words telling the same lies. And the fact that men accept this, that the people’s anger has not destroyed these hollow clowns, strikes me as proof that men attribute no importance to the way they are governed; that they gamble – yes, gamble – with a whole part of their life and their so called 'vital interests."

Albert Camus

"Of course, the judiciary is to a considerable extent politically occupied, and every jurist should know this, even if many now suppress it due to political fanaticism. Question: What is the 3rd state exam in the judiciary? Answer: the party book"

Markus Haintz

"The source of the government's authority is “the consent of the governed.” This means that the government is not the ruler, but the servant or agent of the citizens; it means that the government as such has no rights except the rights delegated to it by the citizens for a specific purpose."

Ayn Rand

"It is curious that people tend to regard government as a quasi-divine, selfless, Santa Claus organization. Government was constructed neither for ability nor for the exercise of loving care; government was built for the use of force and for necessarily demagogic appeals for votes. If individuals do not know their own interests in many cases, they are free to turn to private experts for guidance. It is absurd to say that they will be served better by a coercive, demagogic apparatus."

Murray Rothbard

"Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other."

H. L. Mencken

"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."

Thomas Jefferson

"When the people are afraid of the government, that's tyranny. But when the government is afraid of the people, that's liberty."

Thomas Jefferson

"Now that no one buys our votes, the public has long since cast off its cares; for the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses."

Juvenal

"Those who decide are not elected, and those who are elected have nothing to decide."

Horst Seehofer