Quotes About Democracy

Some feel that it is fair for those with incomes under a certain dollar amount not to pay any federal tax. They say that these people are too poor and it would be a great burden to require them to contribute to the common pot. While I appreciate their compassion, serious problems arise when a person who pays nothing has the right to vote and determine what other people are paying.

When a government turns from following the will of its people to willing its people to follow — acting according to its own prerogatives — it ceases to be a representative government and instead has transformed into something else.

Perhaps well-meaning individuals temporarily forgot that we live in a nation where the majority does not impose its will on the minority simply because it can.

Several times the ancient Greeks attempted to utilize democratic mass participation in governing their city-states, but each time it resulted in tyranny. As the population expands, a democracy becomes increasingly inefficient and rowdy.

As long as you have broad representation from many parts of society, representative government works extremely well. And it works even better when the representatives serve for only a short period of time and return to their communities, leaving a spot for someone else from the community to become the next representative.

They decreed that the American government always be controlled by the will of the people, not the people by the will of the government.

Our founding fathers placed so much emphasis on nurturing a well-educated populace because they knew that our system of democracy could not long survive with ignorant and uncaring citizens who could easily be manipulated by slick politicians.

We must make our choice," wrote Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis. "We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.

The populist mode of democracy is a politics of arousal more than of reason, but also a politics of diversion from serious concerns that need settling in either a liberal democratic or a civic republican manner.

Man's inclination to justice makes democracy possible; but man's capacity for injustice makes it necessary.' The optimism we need to prevent ourselves from destroying our own democratic freedoms and, indeed, our own human habitat must be based on reasoned pessimism.

Democracy: stored up in heaven; but unhappily has not yet been communicated to us.

I side with the West because there is an abyss between totalitarianism and democracy, an obvious fact of which we must never lose sight.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

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 has made them.

Envy is the basis of democracy.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

It is not growing fanaticism, but growing democracy, that causes my troubles. Did you ever read the life of Averroes? He was protected by kings, but hated by the mob, which was fanatical. In the end, the mob won. Free thought has always been a perquisite of aristocracy.

There is, it is true, an idealistic theory according to which democracy is the best form of government. I think myself that this theory is true. But there is no department of practical politics where idealistic theories are strong enough to cause great changes; when great changes occur, the theories which justify them are always a camouflage for passion. And the passion that has given driving force to democratic theories is undoubtedly the passion of envy.

The problem of finding a collection of "wise" men and leaving the government to them is thus an insoluble one. That is the ultimate reason for democracy.

Propaganda is only successful when it is in harmony with something in the patient: his desire for an immortal soul, for health, for the greatness of his nation, or what not. Where there is no such fundamental reason for acquiescence, the assertions of authority are viewed with cynical scepticism. One of the advantages of democracy, from the governmental point of view, is that it makes the average citizen easier to deceive, since he regards the government as his government.

The danger is one which democracy by itself does not suffice to avert. A democracy in which the majority exercises its power without restraint may be almost as tyrannical as a dictatorship. Toleration of minorities is an essential part of wise democracy, but a part which is not always sufficiently remembered.

A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible

One obvious palliative of the evils of democracy in its present form would be to encourage much more publicity and initiative on the part of civil servants. They ought to have the right, and, on occasion, the duty, to frame Bills in their own names, and set forth publicly the arguments in their favor.

Russell observes that the merits of democracy are negative: it does not ensure good government, but it prevents certain evils, such as the evil of a small group of individuals achieving a secure monopoly on political power. The chief peril for the politician, Russell insists, is love of power. And politicians can easily yield to the love of power on the pretense that they are pursuing some absolute good.