Democracy | Some revealing quotes

"We on the left have forgotten that the question is not how do you get good people to rule, most people who rule are mediocre at best and usually venal. The question is how do we make those in power frightened of us and not be seduced by formal political processes." Chris Hedges

"The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department." Thomas Sowell

"Universal suffrage is counter-revolution." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"And the principle which distinguishes democracy from all other forms of government is that in a democracy the opposition not only is tolerated as constitutional but must be maintained because it is in fact indispensable." Walter Lippmann

"What the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others." Thomas Sowell

"The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy." Noam Chomsky

"As a Zionist youth leader in the 1940s, I was among those who called for a binational state in Mandatory Palestine. When a Jewish state was declared, I felt that it should have the rights of other states - no more, no less." Noam Chomsky

"The engineering of consent is the very essence of the democratic process, the freedom to persuade and suggest." Edward Bernays

"Supreme power rests in the will of all or of the majority." Georg Büchner

"Before the formation of this Constitution it had been affirmed as a self evident truth, in the Declaration of Independence, very deliberately made by the Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that 'all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights' This declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union & has never been disannuled. May we not from hence conclude, that the doctrine of Liberty and Equality is an article in the political creed of the United States." Samuel Adams

"If we don't hold fast to our moral principles, nobody's going to. We don't have to have a majority, but once ten, fifteen, twenty million people start voting left, we'll scare the piss out of the Democrats, and they'll have to respond. But they're not going to respond to us until that happens." Chris Hedges

"The thin and precarious crust of decency is all that separates any civilization, however impressive, from the hell of anarchy or systematic tyranny which lie in wait beneath the surface ." Aldous Huxley

"True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate." Lafayette

"Communism is a society where each one works according to his abilities and gets according to his needs." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon