What touches all shall be approved by all.
—Edward I, 1295If the people be the governors, who shall be governed?
—John Cotton, c. 1636Despotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.
—Honoré de Balzac, 1831The worship of opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.
—Harriet Martineau, 1839The world is wearied of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.
—Benjamin Disraeli, 1870So many men, so many opinions.
—Terence, 161 BCIn a true democracy, everyone can be upper-class and live in Connecticut.
—Lisa Birnbach, 1980Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.
—Alexander Hamilton, 1787When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
—Eugene V. Debs, 1918I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.
—Thucydides, c. 404 BCAn electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die.
—George Jackson, 1971When we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.
—Pearl S. Buck, 1941Even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.
—Learned Hand, 1932Television is democracy at its ugliest.
—Paddy Chayefsky, 1976It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority.
—Claude McKay, 1937All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.
—Henry David Thoreau, 1849Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.
—Veronica Wedgwood, 1946Do you suppose it possible to know democracy without knowing the people?
—Xenophon, c. 370 BCSome to the common pulpits, and cry out / “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”
—William Shakespeare, c. 1599What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?
—Mary Renault, 1956Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.
—Shirley Chisholm, 1970Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.
—Shimon Peres, 1995The only equals are those who are equally rich.
—Burundian proverbDemocracy is the fig leaf of elitism.
—Florence King, 1989The people are the foundation of the state. If the foundations are firm, the state will be tranquil.
—Classic of History, c. 400 BCLet the people think they govern, and they will be governed.
—William Penn, 1693Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.
—Eleanor Roosevelt, 1942The king times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end.
—Lord Byron, 1821In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.
—Gertrude Stein, 1937The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.
—Gustave Flaubert, 1871I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.
—James Russell Lowell, 1873The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.
—James Fenimore Cooper, 1838Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant, democracy to many.
—Marguerite Gardiner, 1839An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.
—George Eliot, 1866Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
—Oscar Wilde, 1891Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
—Reinhold Niebuhr, 1944Vox populi, vox humbug.
—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1863The most may err as grossly as the few.
—John Dryden, 1681Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?
—Aristophanes, 414 BCDemocracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.
—Margaret Halsey, 1946Whenever in history equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.
—Mary McCarthy, 1971