Quotes About Democracy

War is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.

Democracy means perfect equality of opportunity, especially in education; not the rotation of every Tom, Dick and Harry in public office.

From whatever angle we approach our eternal political problem we monotonously reach the same conclusion: that the community should determine the ends to be pursued, but that only experts should select and apply the means; that choice should be democratically spread, but that office should be rigidly reserved for the equipped and winnowed best. (Chapter on Aristotle p.89/543)

We recall Macaulay's warning that democracy would collapse when the poor used their electoral power to rob rich Peter to pay lazy Paul. Polybius expressed the same idea in 130 BC: When

Is it not shameful that men should be ruled by orators, who "go ringing on in long harangues, like brazen pots which, when struck, continue to sound till a hand is put upon them"?

Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, dissent, and debate. —HUBERT H. HUMPHREY

I Would Rather Be Governed By the First 2,000 People in the Telephone Directory than by the Harvard University Faculty.

I got the conch! --Piggy (in Lord of the Flies), attempting Democracy

he followed up his Mayflower speech with one of his famous "fireside chats," urging the need for the Court plan and assuring his nationwide audience that he had no desire to be a dictator.

James Madison takes up the question of whether a relatively small number of legislators can be trusted to safeguard the public liberty. Such a system can work, Madison argues, as long as the political and moral responsibilities of the people remain intact. Democracy presupposes the virtue of its individual citizens.

IN A WORLD STILL RULED BY KINGS, President George Washington's decision to not seek a third term clearly signaled that the United States would be governed by the people, not any ruler-for-life.

Democracy was wrong, Kahn declared, when "it countenances government commissions giving to endless innuendo and irresponsible gossip the place and the scope that belong to trustworthy testimony.

All this was made clear enough to the assembled industrialists and they responded with enthusiasm to the promise of the end of the infernal elections, of democracy and disarmament.

Thus was parliamentary democracy finally interred in Germany. Except for the arrests of the Communists and some of the Social Democratic deputies, it was all done quite legally, though accompanied by terror. Parliament

Between the Left and the Right, Germany lacked a politically powerful middle class, which in other countries—in France, in England, in the United States—had proved to be the backbone of democracy

This of course was heresy to Hitler, who accused Otto Strasser of professing the cardinal sins of "democracy and liberalism.

The failure of the duly elected government to build a new Army that would be faithful to its own democratic spirit and subordinate to the cabinet and the Reichstag was a fatal mistake for the Republic, as time would tell.

They might not like the party's demagoguery and its vulgarity, but on the other hand it was arousing the old feelings of German patriotism and nationalism which had been so muted during the first ten years of the Republic. It promised to lead the German people away from communism, socialism, trade-unionism and the futilities of democracy. Above all, it had caught fire throughout the Reich. It was a success.

The failure of the duly elected government to build a new Army that would be faithful to its own democratic spirit and subordinate to the cabinet and the Reichstag was a fatal mistake for the Republic

No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The

Between the Left and the Right, Germany lacked a politically powerful middle class, which in other countries—in France, in England, in the United States—had proved to be the backbone of democracy. In

As we have seen, Hitler's basic ideas were formed in his early twenties in Vienna, and we have his own word for it that he learned little afterward and altered nothing in his thinking. † When he left Austria for Germany in 1913 at the age of twenty-four, he was full of a burning passion for German nationalism, a hatred for democracy, Marxism and the Jews and a certainty that Providence had chosen the Aryans, especially the Germans, to be the master race.

Despite all the terror and intimidation, the majority of them rejected Hitler. The Nazis led the polling with 17,277,180 votes—an increase of some five and a half million, but it comprised only 44 per cent of the total vote. A clear majority still eluded Hitler.

He made it clear enough that there would be no "democratic nonsense" and that the Third Reich would be ruled by the Fuehrerprinzip, the leadership principle—that is, that it would be a dictatorship.