Democratic Flaws Quotes

Under universal suffrage the elected are those who know best how to take in the masses. The minority, which may happen to be the half minus one, is sacrificed.

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

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Democracy is a fickle employer.

Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.

Democracy sounded well and good, but its results are seen not to agree at all with its title. Monarchy, on the contrary, has an unpleasant sound, but is a more practical form of government to live under. For it is easier to find a single excellent man, than to find many of them.

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class; the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

What bitter anguish would not the people of Athens have often escaped if their government had contained so provident a safeguard against tyranny of their own passions? Popular liberty might then have escaped the indelible reproach of decreeing to the same citizens the hemlock on one day and statutes the next.

The Roman republic was indeed never finished. For the caprice of the multitude was left to operate at random. So that every popular demagogue had it in his power to spirit up the multitude to whatever pitch of madness might suit his ambitious, or interested views

The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.

Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.

So when the wolf pounces on your lamb, just ignore the pitiful bleating and remind yourself that this is a democracy, where every sheep can freely express its preference for which kind of wolf it wants to be eaten by. Many sheep, perhaps understandably, prefer a wolf in sheep's clothing, which is after all the basic idea of democracy. So far it has worked pretty well. The wolves all agree on that, and they want to spread democracy everywhere.

In the United States, anybody can be President. That's the problem.

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

The disposition of all power is to abuses, nor does it at all mend the matter that its possessors are a majority.

Vote: The instrument and symbol of a freeman’s power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.

I think I will still feel that same appreciation for what [Winston] Churchill and others have said is the worst form of government except all the alternatives.

A simple democracy is the devil's own government.

Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.