Lapham’s Quarterly

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority.

Vox populi, vox humbug.

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

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

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

So many men, so many opinions.

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

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

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

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

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

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

Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.

The most may err as grossly as the few.

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

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

The only equals are those who are equally rich.

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

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?

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

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

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

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

Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?

What touches all shall be approved by all.

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