Wide World of Quotes > Quotes on Democracy
Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
-- E.B. White
We are called a democracy, for the administration in the hands of many and not of the few.
– Thucydides
When the people rule, they must be rendered happy, or they will overturn the state.
– Alexis De Tocqueville
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
-- Reinhold Niebuhr
Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.
-- Plato
The blind lead the blind. It’s the democratic way.
– Henry Miller
Under democracy, one party always devoted its chief efforts to trying to prove that the other is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed and are right.
-- H.L. Mencken
Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical, and destructive than one, if he be a tyrant.
-- Benito Mussolini
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.
-- George Bernard Shaw
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
-- Abraham Lincoln, 1863
No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
-- Winston Churchill
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