Quotes about democracy

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?

Llita was well above average smart but suffered from the democratic fallacy: the notion that her opinion was as good as anyone’s — while Joe suffered from the aristocratic fallacy: He accepted the notion of authority in opinion.

At one time kings were anointed by Deity, so the problem was to see to it that Deity chose the right candidate. In this age the myth is "the will of the people" ... but the problem changes only superficially.

In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.

I have never been able to see how a thirty-year-old moron can vote more wisely than a fifteen-year-old genius . . . but that was the age of the "divine right of the common man." Never mind, they paid for their folly.

To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives—such as mine to make your lives miserable once a day. Force if you will!—the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force.

To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster; to hold a man responsible for anything he does not control is to behave with blind idiocy. The unlimited democracies were unstable because their citizens were not responsible for the fashion in which they exerted their sovereign authority . . . other than through the tragic logic of history. The unique 'poll tax' that we must pay was unheard of. No attempt was made to determine whether a voter was socially responsible to the extent of his literally unlimited authority. If he voted the impossible, the disastrous possible happened instead—and responsibility was then forced on him willy-nilly and destroyed both him and his foundationless temple.

In whichever way a democratic system might be sick, terrorism does not heal it; it kills it. Democracy is healed with democracy.

That most risky and volatile of all things—a self-pitying majority.

We used to think that secrecy was perhaps the greatest enemy of democracy, and as long as there was no suppression or censorship, people could be trusted to make the informed decisions that would preserve our free society, but we have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.

Eternal vigilance. Remember, no one said democracy would be easy.