Alfred Maurice de Zayas Quotes

The great advantage of representatives is their capacity of discussing public affairs. For this, the people collectively are extremely unfit, which is one of the chief inconveniences of a democracy.

The English king's power was curbed by Parliament, though that wasn't always a good thing, as politicians often behave no better than monarchs - there are just more of them.

A democracy, when put to the strain, grows weak; and it is supplanted by oligarchy [rule by the few].

If certain selected bodies of men, deputed on these principles, determine contrary to the wishes and expectations of their constituents, the people have an undoubted right to reject their decisions, to call for a revision of their conduct, to depute others in their room, or if they think proper, to demand further time for deliberation on matters of the greatest moment: …

I consider biennial elections as a security that the sober, second thought of the people shall be law.

Democracy derailed …. An alternative form of government …. The initiative process has become a tool for millionaires and rich special interests.

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated.

The core idea that underlies all of our democratic states, the core political idea, is this idea that it's not that one person is the sovereign; it's that all of the people are sovereign.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

The problem is there is no such thing as a viable democracy made up of experts, zealots, politicians and spectators.

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party

The Senate of the United States has been both extravagantly praised and unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of its various critics…. The truth is, in this case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical. The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it.

The few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons.

The Congress is not a court of law but it is a court of public opinion.

I think if the people of this country can be reached with the truth, their judgment will be in favor of the many, as against the privileged few.

The freedom to persuade and suggest is the essence of the democratic process.

Government is everywhere to a great extent controlled by powerful minorities, with an interest distinct from that of the mass of the people.

To say that sovereignty vests with the people, and that they have not a right to instruct and control their representative is absurd to the last degree.

In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

Their ideas may contradict the sense of the whole people; hence the consequence that instructions are binding on the representative is of a doubtful, if not a dangerous nature.

The majority voice should be controlling ... after a full, fair, and candid expression.