2,003 Quotes About Democracy

Both Buchanan and Calhoun[...] were concerned wit the "failure of democracy to preserve liberty

[...] Rothbard explained, was "that it was intervention of the State that in itself created the classes and the conflict", not the labor relations of the economy, as previous thinkers believed

What we are seeing today is a new iteration of that very old impulse in America: the quest of some of the propertied (always, it bears noting, a particularly ideologically extreme—and some would say greedy—subsection of the propertied) to restrict the promise of democracy for the many, acting in the knowledge that the majority would choose other policies if it could.

Unfortunately, you can’t vote the rascals out, because you never voted them in, in the first place. The corporate executives and the corporation lawyers and so on who overwhelmingly staff the executive, assisted increasingly by a university based mandarin class, remain in power no matter whom you elect.

The Tyrants who, at the end of the seventh century, had everywhere gained control, first in the leading Ionian states and then on the mainland, signify a decisive victory for individualism over the ideology of kinship. In this respect, as in others, they form the bridge to democracy, many of whose conquests they anticipate, for all their own undemocratic character.

Spineless citizens create spineless democracy.

Today a new generation that does not accept the fanciful notion that "there's no alternative" is in motion and on the rise. The "end of history" is over. The 1980s and 1990s are fading points in the rearview mirror, as we awaken to a very different "morning in America" than the one ushered in with Ronald Reagan's inauguration.

In order to build a truly civilized society, we need, not democratic government, but meritocratic government.

Such a democracy establishes nothing that comes in power without transparent, capable, and eligible characters, which can match the essence of democracy. Indeed, it disregards and abuses to itself.