Democracy Quotes – Reflections on Political Structures

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result."

Albert Einstein

"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas."

Josef Stalin

"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

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?"

Claude Frédéric Bastiat

"With all due respect, you can’t heat houses in winter with nuclear energy. And as if that blatant nonsense weren’t enough, she added: They shouldn’t assume we’re any more foolish than the average person."

Claudia Roth

"Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent every year to control the public mind"

Noam Chomsky

"It is hardly necessary to point out that the inability of the masses to judge correctly deprives them of any capacity for critical thought—that is, the ability to distinguish truth from error and to form a sound judgment. The judgments adopted by the masses are merely imposed on them and are never the result of careful examination. Many individuals, in this respect, do not rise above the level of the crowd. The ease with which certain opinions become widely accepted is due above all to the inability of most people to form an opinion of their own on the basis of personal reasoning."

Gustave Le Bon

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

Jacques Chirac

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root"

Henry David Thoreau

"Never let a good crisis go to waste."

Winston Churchill

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."

Martin Luther King

"For almost two years now, an alleged pandemic has had us firmly in its grip. Day after day, the media and politicians bombard us with narratives and measures. It’s time we take a stand against it. This may be our last chance. If we go along with it and they achieve their goal, life here will become very uncomfortable for us and for future generations. I hope that resistance and clarity continue to grow—and that we force an end to it."

Tobias Levels

"Fear of the virus—fear of getting sick, fear of dying—is the most effective distraction one can politically set in motion: to intimidate people and focus them on that fear so completely that, in the end, you can basically do whatever you want with us."

Dr. Hans-Joachim Maaz

"I never thought I'd live to see the day when the right wing would become the cool ones giving the middle finger to the establishment, and the left wing becoming the sniveling self-righteous twatty ones going around shaming everyone."

John Joseph Lydon

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

Benito Mussolini

"Fascism, Nazism, Communism and Socialism are only superficial variations of the same monstrous theme—collectivism."

Ayn Rand

"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