Democracy Quotes – Reflections on Political Structures

"Anarchy, the absence of a master, of a sovereign."

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing."

Neil Postman

"Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors."

Aldous Huxley

"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses."

H. L. Mencken

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance."

Henry Louis Mencken

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage."

Henry Louis Mencken

"In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs."

Walter Lippmann

"What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority."

Walter Lippmann

"The first principle of a civilized state is that the power is legitimate only when it is under contract."

Walter Lippmann

"No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people."

Walter Lippmann

"Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven."

H. L. Mencken

"Every age that has historical status is governed by aristocracies.Aristocracy with the meaning - the best are ruling.Peoples do never govern themselves. That lunacy was concocted by liberalism. Behind its people's sovereignty the slyest cheaters are hiding, who don't want to be recognized."

Joseph Goebbels

"Since the 1970s, the battlefields on which the contradictions of democratic capitalism are fought out have become ever more complex, making it exceedingly difficult for anyone outside the political and financial elites to recognize the underlying interests and identify their own. While this may generate apathy on the mass level and thereby make life easier for the elites, there is no relying on it, in a world in which blind compliance with financial investors is propounded as the only rational and responsible behavior. To those who refuse to be talked out of other social rationalities and responsibilities, such a world may appear simply absurd - at which the only rational and responsible conduct to throw as many as wrenches as into the works of haute finance. Where democracy as we know it is effectively suspended, as it already is in countries like Greece, Ireland, and Portugal, street riots and popular insurrection may be the last remaining mode of political expression for those devoid of market power. Should we hope in the name of democracy that we will soon have the opportunity to observe a few more examples?"

Wolfgang Streeck

"One hundred percent democracy: No one is so insignificant that they cannot harm another."

Gabriel Laub

"Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife."

John Dewey

"The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness."

Niels Bohr

"Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy.""

Gore Vidal

"To-day a democrat of the old school would demand, not freedom for the press, but freedom from the press; but mean-time the leaders have changed themselves into parvenus who have to secure their position vis-a-vis the masses."

Oswald Spengler