Politics and Dynasty under Democracy – H. L. Mencken

"The political class is supported by the many-thousand-voiced chorus of those who are committed to it by the already accomplished or still hoped-for awarding of offices and dignities. The proof of deficiencies is made difficult at the outset by the fact that there is an abundance of thought patterns (paradigms), formulas and theories that support the basic ideological thesis of the quasi-automatic functioning of the system. They seek to close the gap between norm and reality not by improving reality, but by interpreting the norm laxly or by obfuscating reality. Serving the cause of legitimizing power despite its democratic shortcomings" Hans Herbert von Arnim

"When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental - men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre." Henry Louis Mencken