Democracy Quotes – Reflections on Political Structures

"Germany is a supertanker—but sitting in the bridge is not the Federal Chancellor. Sitting there are the people here on this podium."

Ernst-Moritz Lipp

"The anarchist is not an enemy of order. He loves order so much that he cannot endure its caricature"

Antonine Artaud

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

Henry Louis Mencken

"People have no idea how many constraints there are in politics. Politicians are, to some extent, governed by processes, events, and procedures beyond their control. You are not all-powerful—at times, you are simply powerless."

Peter Tauber

"Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is mob rule—incited by demagogues and steered in an unstable manner. German democracy in particular displays traits of a soft totalitarianism, marked by pervasive self-censorship that is often scarcely even recognized as such."

Prof. Hans Hermann Hoppe

"The power structures that have emerged are not democratically legitimized, and they can no longer be voted out of office through any electoral process. The most important power structures in our society are no longer accessible to the voter at all… and one does not want the ordinary citizen to even know that they exist. They are meant to remain invisible within the framework of public debate."

Prof. Rainer Mausfeld

"The fundamental problem with our democracy is that it is not one. The people—the nominal ruler and sovereign—have, in reality, nothing to say. … Behind the democratic façade, a system has been installed in which completely different rules apply than those of the Basic Law. The system is undemocratic and corrupt; it abuses power and unscrupulously deceives citizens. … Every German is free to obey laws to which he has never consented; he may admire the majesty of the Basic Law, whose validity he has never legitimized; he is free to pay homage to politicians whom no citizen has ever elected, and to provide for them lavishly—with his tax money, about the use of which he has never been consulted. Overall, the state and politics are in a condition of which only professional optimists or hypocrites can claim it has arisen from the will of the citizens."

Prof. Dr. Hans Herbert von Arnim

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

Henry Louis Mencken

"The state is supposed to protect the poor. — From what, exactly? From prosperity."

Unbekannt

"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else."

Claude Frédéric Bastiat

"Even once we have a vaccine and know more about possible immunity, one thing remains clear for us: there must not be a two-tier society of infected and non-infected people. There can be no mandatory vaccination — and there will be none."

Bärbel Bas

"One might still justify the submission of an entire people to a small number of rulers if those in power were the best among us—but that is not the case, never has been, and never can be. All too often it is the worst, the most insignificant, the most cruel, the most immoral—and especially the most deceitful—who rule. And the fact that this is so is no accident."

Leo Tolstoi (Leo Tolstoy)

"It is the opposition’s job to strip the government of its makeup while the show is still going on."

Jacques Chirac

"For Germany, ‘deep state’ means a structure of its own—one that is not subject to oversight, not bound by the rule of law, and able to act according to its own interests and expediency, without legal constraints and without control by a democracy based on the separation of powers."

Hajo Funke

"It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members. So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect and sometimes get favors for themselves after the election’s over. … The incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody’s who’s already in Congress has a lot more to sell to an avid contributor than somebody who’s just a challenger."

Jimmy Carter

"By casting his vote in an election, the voter hands over his right to political participation—and in doing so legitimizes the actions that may later be taken against him."

Herbert Wehner

"The state, rather, is a parasitic institution that lives off the wealth of its subjects, concealing its anti-social, predatory nature beneath a public-interest veneer."

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.

"Government is the illusion of authority, but more importantly government is mind control. Naturally, since if you want people to believe in this fictitious thing called ‘authority’ you first have to mold the minds of the collective to accept this false ideology. This is what government is. It’s the illusion of some “official” group of people out there who get to tell everybody else what to do and how to do it. The truth is there is no such thing as authority, and government is an illusion that we’ve imposed upon ourselves from the irrational thinking of a controlled mind.

It’s generally agreed that the power of government ultimately comes from the people. Governments seem to have rights that individuals do not. And it’s agreed that it is these individuals that make up government. It doesn’t take much critical thinking to realize that individuals are granting power that they don’t possess to a group of other individuals who call themselves ‘government’. One cannot delegate a right that they do not possess individually. This is one of the fundamental reasons why government is completely and utterly fallacious."

Joe Dubs