Democracy

Alcuin - Nec audiendi qui solent dicere, Vox populi, vox Dei, quum tumultuositas vulgi semper insaniae proxima sit. English: And those people should not be listened to who keep saying the voice of the people is the voice of God, since the riotousness of the crowd is always very close to madness.

Raymond Aron (1939) - Je crois à la victoire finale des démocraties, mais à une condition, c’est qu’elles le veuillent.

Bill Bishop & Robert Cushing (in The Big Sort, 2008) - Mixed company moderates; like-minded company polarizes. Heterogeneous communities restrain group excesses; homogeneous communities march toward the extremes.

Jean-Louis Bourlanges - [Dans les démocraties,] le pouvoir appartient à ceux qui le veulent le plus et qui l'exercent le moins.

Charles Brownson (American congressman, 1914-1988) - One should never quarrel with anyone who buys ink by the barrel.

Sir Winston Churchill (Speech in the House of Commons, 11 November 1947) - 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.

Mario Cuomo (in The New Republic, 4 April 1985) - You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

Benjamin Disraeli (1871) - England is governed not by logic but by parliament.

Edmund Fawcett - Though often spoken of interchangeably, liberalism and democracy are distinct. Liberalism is about how power is to be controlled, how human life is to be improved and how people are to enjoy respect. Democracy is about who belongs in that happy circle of voice, progress and protection. Liberalism answers the question ‘How?’ Democracy answers ‘Who?’ Liberalism is about content; democracy about scope.

Wrongly attributed to Joseph Goebbels - This will always remain one of the best jokes of democracy, that it gave its deadly enemies the means by which it was destroyed. (Das wird immer einer der besten Witze der Demokratie bleiben, daß sie ihren Todfeinden die Mittel selber stellte, durch die sie vernichtet wurde.)

Learned Hand (1944) - The Spirit of Liberty is the Spirit which is not too sure that it is right.

Frank McKinney Hubbard - We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.

H. L. Mencken - Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

H. L. Mencken - Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Philippe Meyer - Le constitutionnaliste est un être naturellement bavard.

Barrington Moore Jr - No bourgeois, no democracy.

Yasha Mounk (in The People vs Democracy, 2018) - On the one hand, the preferences of the people are increasingly illiberal: voters are growing impatient with independent institutions and less and less willing to tolerate the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. On the other hand, elites are taking hold of the political system and making it increasingly unresponsive: the powerful are less and less willing to cede to the views of the people. As a result, liberalism and democracy, the two core elements of our political system, are starting to come into conflict.

Jan-Werner Müller (in What is Populism, 2016) - The whole direction of political development in postwar Europe has been toward fragmenting political power (...) as well as empowering unelected institutions or institutions beyond electoral accountability, such as constitutional courts, all in the name of strengthening democracy itself. That development was based on specific lessons that European elites—rightly or wrongly—drew from the political catastrophes of midcentury: (...) how could one trust people who had brought fascists to power or extensively collaborated with fascist occupiers? Less obviously, elites also had deep reservations about the idea of parliamentary sovereignty. (...) After all, had not legitimate representative assemblies handed all power over to Hitler and to Marshal Pétain, the leader of Vichy France, in 1933 and 1940, respectively? (...) The desire to “lock in” liberal-democratic commitments became more pronounced in the specific case of the European Union (...) context with the transitions to democracy in Southern Europe in the 1970s.

Mancur Olson (in The Rise and Decline of Nations) - The accumulation of distributional coalitions increases the complexity of regulation, the role of government, and the complexity of understandings, and changes the direction of social evolution.

Charles Péguy (in Les suppliants parallèles, 1905) - Le triomphe des démagogies est passager. Mais les ruines sont éternelles.

Shimon Peres - The polls are like perfume, best to be smelled not drunk.

Wendell Phillips (January 28, 1852, speech to members of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society) - Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Karl Popper (in The Open Society and its Enemies, 1945) - The paradox of tolerance: unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. (...) We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.

Amartya Sen - No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy…

George Bernard Shaw (1944) - A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier (26 01 2017) - Being in the opposition is s**t but it is the fertilizer of democracy. (German original: Opposition ist Mist, aber sie ist der Dünger der Demokratie!)

Jonathan Swift (1727) - Party is the madness of many, for the gain of the few.

Dick Tuck (conceding defeat in a Californian state Senate race, 1966) - The people have spoken. The bastards.

Voltaire (Lettre à M. Damillaville - 19 mars 1766) - Il est à propos que le peuple soit guidé, et non pas qu'il soit instruit; il n'est pas digne de l'être.

Voltaire (Lettre à M. Damillaville - 1er avril 1766) - Ce n'est pas le manœuvre qu'il faut instruire, c'est le bon bourgeois, c'est l'habitant des villes; (...) Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu.