Democracy | Some revealing quotes

"You don't have to be satisfied with America as you find it. You can change it. I didn't like the way I found America some sixty years ago, and I've been trying to change it ever since." Upton Sinclair

"Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact." Lyndon Johnson

"I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy." A. J. Liebling

"If you ask the government to impose morality, then moral questions will be decided by whoever has the most political power." Harry Browne

"Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good." H. L. Mencken

"Who wants good people in government? Good people should be in the private sector. Helping us out, helping themselves out in the private sector. We want schmoes in government. We want people who can't find the doorknob. Why waste productive people, as well as looting the taxpayer?" Murray Rothbard

"Neoliberal democracy. Instead of citizens, it produces consumers. Instead of communities, it produces shopping malls. The net result is an atomized society of disengaged individuals who feel demoralized and socially powerless. In sum, neoliberalism is the immediate and foremost enemy of genuine participatory democracy, not just in the United States but across the planet, and will be for the foreseeable future." Noam Chomsky

"Unless democracy is to commit suicide by consenting to its own destruction, it will have to find some formidable answer to those who come to it saying: I demand from you in the name of your principles the rights which I shall deny to you later in the name of my principles." Walter Lippmann

"A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting." Walter Lippmann

"To create a minimum standard of life below which no human being can fall is the most elementary duty of the democratic state." Walter Lippmann

"Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the true functions of power. The derangement brings about the enfeeblement, verging on paralysis, of the capacity to govern. This breakdown in the constitutional order is the cause of the precipitate and catastrophic decline of Western society. It may, if it cannot be arrested and reversed, bring about the fall of the West." Walter Lippmann

"The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy." Edward Bernays

"In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued - they may be essential to survival." Noam Chomsky

"The defence of democracy must consist in making anti-democratic experiences too costly for those who try them; much more costly than a democratic compromise" Karl Popper