2,003 Quotes About Democracy

This is why we apply the LCD Principle or Lowest Common Democracy. In short, this is social interaction based not on the best possible good, but on the least possible offense. Without saying so, the parties involved have entered into the following arrangement: What is the least we can all agree on and still get along? Of course, you can see this means no one is pleased.

Jamie aveva orrore di qualsiasi forma di estremismo e sosteneva che i guerriglieri si giustificano solo durante la tirannia, quando non c’è altra scelta che battersi con le armi, ma che sono un’aberrazione in un paese dove i cambiamenti si possono ottenere con votazioni popolari.

Rather than signalling the aspiration for system of checks and balances against absolute power, democracy become a euphemism for majority rule.

[D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom."-William F Buckley

Лук је као у откровењу схватио зашто је пропала грчка цивилизација. Никог више није било њоме да управља. Нико од Грка није хтео да влада и да се тако лиши уживања да по власти пљује.

New Englanders began the Revolution not to institute reforms and changes in the order of things, but to save the institutions and customs that already had become old and venerable with them; and were new only to a few stupid Englishmen a hundred and fifty years behind the times.

In my opinion the main evil of the present democratic institutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted in Europe, from their weakness, but from their overpowering strength; and I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty which reigns in that country as at the very inadequate securities which exist against tyranny.

We may still contrive to raise three cheers for democracy, although at present she only deserves two.

Globally, democracies have also acted in ways that suggest an outright renunciation of their principles at home.