Democracy | Some revealing quotes

"The charade of politics is to make voters think that the personal narrative of the candidate affects the operation of the corporate state. It doesn't really matter on the fundamental issues whether the President is Republican or Democratic." Chris Hedges

"Sycophancy toward those who hold power is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist.... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience." Allan Bloom

"Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"All men are equal and free: society by nature, and destination, is therefore autonomous and ungovernable. If the sphere of activity of each citizen is determined by the natural division of work and by the choice he makes of a profession, if the social functions are combined in such a way as to produce a harmonious effect, order results from the free activity of all men; there is no government. Whoever puts a hand on me to govern me is an usurper and a tyrant; I declare him my enemy." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"All parties without exception, when they seek for power, are varieties of absolutism." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"Do not keep silent when your own ideas and values are being attacked. If a dictatorship ever comes to this country, it will be by the fault of those who keep silent. We are still free enough to speak. Do we have time? No one can tell." Ayn Rand

"Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions." Jonathan Swift

"The typical democrat is quite willing to exchange any of the theoretical boons of freedom for something that he can use." H. L. Mencken

"Anarchy, the absence of a master, of a sovereign." Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

"Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving your opinion to a pollster, who will get a version of it through a desiccated question, and then will submerge it in a Niagara of similar opinions, and convert them into--what else?--another piece of news. Thus we have here a great loop of impotence: The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing." Neil Postman

"Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality. But today, in the world's most powerful democracy, the politicians and the propagandists prefer to make nonsense of democratic procedures by appealing almost exclusively to the ignorance and irrationality of the electors." Aldous Huxley

"Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses." H. L. Mencken

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." Henry Louis Mencken

"Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage." Henry Louis Mencken