Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.
Alan Coren
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
A fool is very dangerous when in power.
Denis Fonvizin
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.
Edvard Teller
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel
Only the educated are free.
Epictetus
He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
F.A. Hayek
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.
Gunther Grass
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Helen Keller
If...the machine of government...is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Henry David Thoreau
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
J. W. Fulbright
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
John Adams
Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.
John V. Lindsay
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
Robert Hutchins
Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried.
Stuart Chase
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Thomas Jefferson
The most serious threat to democracy is the notion that it has already been achieved.
Unknown
A great war always creates more scoundrels than it kills.
Unknown
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
Unknown
When the government fears the people, that is LIBERTY. When people fear the government, that is TYRANNY.
Unknown
When a nation's government becomes more fearful of its citizens' rights than protective of them, that nation's future is only despotism and extinction.
Unknown
Don't be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully, and more systematically what you have done badly.
V. I. Lenin
People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.
V. I. Lenin
Life teaches none but those who study it.
V. O. Kliuchevsky
Alan Coren
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Benjamin Franklin
A fool is very dangerous when in power.
Denis Fonvizin
The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.
Edmund Burke
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy; the best weapon of a democracy is openness.
Edvard Teller
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.
Edward Abbey
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.
Elie Wiesel
Only the educated are free.
Epictetus
He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin
Fifty-one percent of a nation can establish a totalitarian regime, suppress minorities and still remain democratic.
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
Perhaps the fact that we have seen millions voting themselves into complete dependence on a tyrant has made our generation understand that to choose one's government is not necessarily to secure freedom.
F.A. Hayek
Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
George Bernard Shaw
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Groucho Marx
The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.
Gunther Grass
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Imagine the Creator as a low comedian, and at once the world becomes explicable.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be lead to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.
H.L. Mencken (1880-1956)
Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.
Helen Keller
If...the machine of government...is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.
Henry David Thoreau
In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.
J. W. Fulbright
Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
John Adams
Those who make peaceful change impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy
Those who suppress freedom always do so in the name of law and order.
John V. Lindsay
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Josh Billings
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
Robert Hutchins
Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried.
Stuart Chase
It is the old practice of despots to use a part of the people to keep the rest in order.
Thomas Jefferson
The most serious threat to democracy is the notion that it has already been achieved.
Unknown
A great war always creates more scoundrels than it kills.
Unknown
Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think.
Unknown
When the government fears the people, that is LIBERTY. When people fear the government, that is TYRANNY.
Unknown
When a nation's government becomes more fearful of its citizens' rights than protective of them, that nation's future is only despotism and extinction.
Unknown
Don't be afraid to admit defeat. Learn from defeat. Do over again more thoroughly, more carefully, and more systematically what you have done badly.
V. I. Lenin
People always have been and they always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics.
V. I. Lenin
Life teaches none but those who study it.
V. O. Kliuchevsky
mthrsuperior:
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
mthrsuperior:
"A society gets all the criminals it deserves" Emma Goldman