Democracy | Some revealing quotes

"Democracy is four wolves and a sheep voting on dinner." Robert A. Heinlein

"The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That's a personal evaluation, of course." Robert A. Heinlein

"What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'." Robert A. Heinlein

"Even the Founding Fathers of the U.S., nowadays considered the model of a democracy, were strictly opposed to it. Without a single exception, they thought of democracy as nothing but mob-rule." Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"Not only is this close correlation between democracy and dictatorship troublesome for democratic-peace theorists; worse, they must come to grips with the fact that the dictatorships emerging from crises of democracy are by no means always worse, from a classical liberal or libertarian view, than what would have resulted otherwise." Hans-Hermann Hoppe

"The market is a democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote." Ludwig von Mises

"I will step outside the system. Voting for the “lesser evil”-or failing to vote at all-is part of the corporate agenda to crush what is left of our anemic democracy. And those who continue to participate in the vaudeville of a two-party process, who refuse to confront in every way possible the structures of corporate power, assure our mutual destruction." Chris Hedges

"More than 50 years of elite democracy have shown us where this road leads. It is the path of destruction. The destruction of community, the destruction of the idea of community, the destruction of life by the millions, the destruction of cultural and civilizational substance - especially in the Third World - and the destruction of our ecological foundations. The beneficiaries of this destruction have no reason to change this path of destruction. The necessary energy for change can only come from below - from us. That is our task and that is our responsibility." Professor Dr. Rainer Mausfeld

"Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be." Gore Vidal

"When once a Republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil." Thomas Jefferson

"The government you elect is the government you deserve." Thomas Jefferson

"What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally." Walter Lippmann

"The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force." Walter Lippmann

"Since the 1930s the technique of buying votes with the voters' own money has been expanded to an extent undreamed of by earlier politicians." Milton Friedman