Quotes About Democracy

For democracies to thrive, the majority must respect the rights of minorities to dissent, loudly.

Populism tends to look good from a distance, but close up it can be frightening.

Anti-populism is all about despair. Its attitude toward ordinary humans is bitter. Its hope for human redemption is nil. Its vision of the common good is bleak. Its dark mood gives us books with titles like In Defense of Elitism and Against Democracy.

It is my argument that reversing the meaning of "populist" tells us something important about the people who reversed it: denunciations of populism like the ones we hear so frequently nowadays arise from a long tradition of pessimism about popular sovereignty and democratic participation. And it is that pessimism—that tradition of quasi-aristocratic scorn—that has allowed the paranoid right to flower so abundantly.

Today, seemingly every well-educated person in America and Europe knows that populism is the name we give to mass movements that are bigoted and irrational; that threaten democracy's norms with their anti-intellectual demagoguery.

What I mean to show is that the message of anti-populism is the same as ever: the lower orders, it insists, are driven by irrationality, bigotry, authoritarianism, and hate; democracy is a problem because it gives such people a voice. The difference today is that enlightened liberals are the ones mouthing this age-old anti-populist catechism.

WHAT THESE EXAMPLES show us is a generation of centrist liberals collectively despairing over democracy itself. After turning their backs on working-class issues, traditionally one of the core concerns of left parties, Democrats stood by while right-wing demagoguery took root and thrived. Then, after the people absorbed a fifty-year blizzard of fake populist propaganda, Democrats turned against the idea of "the people" altogether.17

Corruption is uniquely reprehensible in a democracy because it violates the system's first principle, which we all learned back in the sunshiny days of elementary school: that the government exist to serve the public, not particular companies or individuals or even elected officials.

If we conceive of free speech as promoting the search for truth—as the metaphor of "the marketplace of ideas" suggests—we should be troubled whether that search is hindered by public officials or private citizens. The same is true of democratic justifications for free speech. If the point of free speech is to facilitate the open debate that is essential for self-rule, any measure that impairs that debate should give us pause, regardless of its source.

The right of all members of society to form their own beliefs and communicate them freely to others must be regarded as an essential principle of a democratically organized society.

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.

The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

The people are the only censors of their governors, and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution.

The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.

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

An elective despotism was not the government we fought for, but one which should not only be founded on true free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among general bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others

Governments are republican only in proportion as they employ the will of the people and execute it.

The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations.

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.

I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master.

Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories.