Lapham’s Quarterly

I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.

Whenever in history equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.

Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.

When we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.

Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

The most may err as grossly as the few.

Some to the common pulpits, and cry out / “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”

I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.

Despotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.

Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

The only equals are those who are equally rich.

The king times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end.

Even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant, democracy to many.

An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die.

In a true democracy, everyone can be upper-class and live in Connecticut.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

The world is wearied of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

The worship of opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.

Do you suppose it possible to know democracy without knowing the people?

Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.

The people are the foundation of the state. If the foundations are firm, the state will be tranquil.

So many men, so many opinions.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

Vox populi, vox humbug.

What touches all shall be approved by all.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?

Democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.

If the people be the governors, who shall be governed?