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Democracy is government by the people

• Democracy:  A system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.   Oxford Dictionary
• Democracy:  The belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves.  Cambridge Dictionary
• Democracy:  Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.  Dictionary.com
• Democracy:  A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.  Merriam Webster 
• A democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness sake, I will call it the idea of freedom.  Theodore Parker
• Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.  Aristotle
• Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country. Franklin D. Roosevelt
• A government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.  Abraham Lincoln
• Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice.  Harry S. Truman
• Politics,  Equality,  Freedom,  Justice,  The media

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In democracy, everyone gets a vote

• In democracy, it’s your vote that counts; In feudalism it’s your count that votes.  Mogens Jallberg
• It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.  Tom Stoppard
• Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee.  Helen Keller
• The ballot is stronger than the bullet.  Abraham Lincoln
• The future is best decided by ballots, not bullets.  Ronald Reagan
• The idea of an election is much more interesting to me than the election itself…The act of voting is in itself the defining moment.   Jeff Melvoin
• At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper-no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of the point.  Winston Churchill

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Democracy is based on a belief in the equality of all citizens

• Democracy arose from men’s thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely. Aristotle
• The love of democracy is that of equality.  Charles de Montesquieu
• Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike.  Plato
• Democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves they will seek it, cherish it, and view any deprivation of it with regret. But for equality their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery. Alexis de Tocqueville
• If liberty and equality, as is thought by some are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.  Aristotle
• It is a strange fact that freedom and equality, the two basic ideas of democracy, are to some extent contradictory. Logically considered, freedom and equality are mutually exclusive, just as society and the individual are mutually exclusive. Thomas Mann
• It is the life of democracy to favour equality.   Christian Nestell Bovee
• The unconscious democracy of America is a very fine thing. It is a true and deep and instinctive assumption of the equality of citizens, which even voting and elections have not destroyed.  G. K. Chesterton
• As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.  Abraham Lincoln
• Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. Alexis de Tocqueville
• The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.  Edward Bellamy
• Equality

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Many are strong advocates of democracy

• God’s hand, like a sign-board, is pointing toward democracy, and saying to the nations of the earth, “This is the way: walk ye in it.”  Henry Ward Beecher
• I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. Nelson Mandela
• The best cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy.  Edward Abbey
• The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history.  Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The very essence of democracy is the absolute faith that while people must cooperate, the first function of democracy, its peculiar gift, is to develop each individual into everything that he might be.  Edwin H. Land
• Two cheers for Democracy; one because it admits variety, and two because it permits criticism. E. M. Forster
• Democracy alone, of all forms of government, enlists the full force of men’s enlightened will.   Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.  Harry Emerson Fosdick
• Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.  Walter Winchell
• Democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honourable form of government ever devised by man.  Ronald Reagan
• I always assume that democracy is the only good form of government, quite frankly, and democracy is always to be preferred.  Jeane Kirkpatrick
• In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.  Noam Chomsky
• I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.  Woodrow Wilson

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Democracy aims to promote equality of opportunity

• Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions – it only guarantees equality of opportunity. Irving Kristol
• The essence of democracy is its assurance that every human being should so respect himself and should be so respected in his own personality that he should have opportunity equal to that of every other human being to show what he was meant to become.   Anna Garlin Spencer
• I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. Nelson Mandela
• Opportunity

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Democracy aims to safeguard against tyranny and corruption

• Democratic institutions form a system of quarantine for tyrannical desires.  Friedrich Nietzsche
• The many are more incorruptible than the few; they are like the greater quantity of water which is less easily corrupted than a little.  Aristotle

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Democracy aims to promote the will of citizens

• Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.   George Bernard Shaw
• Democracy’s worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.  Robert A. Heinlein

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Democracy aims to safeguard human rights and individual liberty

• While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.  Charles Evans Hughes
• Democracy is the common pursuit of mankind, and all countries must earnestly protect the democratic rights of the people.  Hu Jintao

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Democracy provides protection from bad leaders

• Democracy has never promised ideal outcomes. Its strength is to allow the bloodless removal of bad leaders.  Karl Popper

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Education is necessary for democracy

• Only the educated are free. Epictetus
• Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.  Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The aim of education is to enable individuals to continue their education … (and) the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth. Now this idea cannot be applied to all the members of a society except where intercourse of man with man is mutual, and except where there is adequate provision for the reconstruction of social habits and institutions by means of wide stimulation arising from equitably distributed interests. And this means a democratic society.  John Dewey
• In our so-called democracy, we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.  Carter G. Woodson
• Education is a human right with immense power to transform. On its foundation rest the cornerstones of freedom, democracy and sustainable human development.  Kofi Annan
• Democracy means government by the uneducated while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.   G.K. Chesterton
• Education and democracy have the same goal: the fullest possible development of human capabilities.  Paul Wellstone
• Education

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Being informed is necessary for democracy

• If we don’t have an informed electorate we don’t have a democracy. So, I don’t care how people get the information, as long as they get it. I’m just doing it my particular way and I feel lucky I can do it the way I want to do it.  Jim Lehrer
• Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.  Thomas Jefferson

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Freedom of opposition and dissention is necessary for democracy

• To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.  Aung San Suu Kyi
• Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.  H. L. Mencken
• Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. Howard Zinn
• In a democracy dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.  J. William Fulbright
• In a democracy, the opposition is not only tolerated as constitutional, but must be maintained because it is indispensable.  Walter Lippmann
• In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith.  J. William Fulbright
• You measure a democracy by the freedom it gives its dissidents, not the freedom it gives its assimilated conformists.  Abbie Hoffman
• The best defence against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.  William F. Buckley, Jr.
• Democracy is a small hard core of common agreement, surrounded by a rich variety of individual differences.  James Bryant Conant
• Our political institutions work remarkably well. They are designed to clang against each other. The noise is democracy at work.  Michael Novak

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Courage and literacy is necessary for democracy

• Democracy is a difficult art of government, demanding of its citizens high ratios of courage and literacy, and at the moment we lack both the necessary habits of mind and a sphere of common reference.  Lewis H. Lapham
• Democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not “given”, it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.  Aung San Suu Kyi
• Courage

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Discussion and debate is necessary for democracy

• Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.  Clement Atlee
• The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.  Barack Obama

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Aspiration and energy is necessary for democracy

• I submit to you that when in each man the dream of personal greatness dies, democracy loses the real source of its future strength.  Edwin H. Land
• Democracy is timelessly human, and timelessness always implies a certain amount of potential youthfulness.  Thomas Mann
• If in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave.  Jane Addams

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An open society that shares information is necessary for democracy

• Democracy must be built through open societies that share information. When there is information, there is enlightenment. When there is debate, there are solutions. When there is no sharing of power, no rule of law, no accountability, there is abuse, corruption, subjugation and indignation. Atifete Jahjaga
• The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness. Niels Bohr
• Secrecy begets tyranny.  Robert A. Heinlein

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The active participation of citizens is necessary for democracy

• Democracy works when people claim it as their own.  Bill Moyers
• The job of a citizen is to keep his mouth open.   Gunther Grass
• There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship.   Ralph Nader
• The most important political office is that of the private citizen.  Louis D. Brandeis
• Where you see wrong or inequality or injustice, speak out, because this is your country. This is your democracy. Make it. Protect it. Pass it on. Thurgood Marshall
• To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers. One who does not vote has no right to complain. Louis L’Amour
• We always hear about the rights of democracy, but the major responsibility of it is participation. Wynton Marsalis
• If you are part of a society that votes, then do so. There may be no candidates and no measures you want to vote for … but there are certain to be ones you want to vote against. In case of doubt, vote against. By this rule you will rarely go wrong.  Robert A. Heinlein
• A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.  Bill Vaughan
• In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power but carries the ultimate responsibility.  Norman Cousins
• Voting is one of the few things where boycotting in protest clearly makes the problem worse rather than better.  Jane Bowles
• Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.  George Jean Nathan

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Trust and understanding is necessary for democracy

• Democracy demands trust. It demands that sense of mutual understanding. And – it’s a two-way street. You’ve got to give – as much as you take. Charles Kennedy
• Trust,  Understanding

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A rule of law in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens is necessary for democracy

• The bedrock of our democracy is the rule of law and that means we have to have an independent judiciary, judges who can make decisions independent of the political winds that are blowing. Caroline Kennedy
• Democracy is not just constitutional and legislative rules; it is a culture and practice and adhering by the law and respecting international human rights principles. Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
• It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.  James F. Cooper

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Setting aside differences is necessary for democracy

• The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose.  Barack Obama

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Integrity is necessary for democracy

• Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy. Deceit is a poison in its veins. Edward Kennedy
• Integrity

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Compromise is necessary for democracy

• A government held together by the bands of reason only, requires much compromise of opinion; that things even salutary should not be crammed down the throats of dissenting brethren, especially when they may be put into a form to be willingly swallowed, and that a great deal of indulgence is necessary to strengthen habits of harmony and fraternity.  Thomas Jefferson
• Compromise

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Freedom of the press is necessary for democracy

• Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.  Noam Chomsky
• Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.  William Blum
• The media

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Protection of minorities is necessary for democracy

• Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.  Albert Camus
• And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed.  Lee Harvey Oswald
• Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.  Harlan F. Stone

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Justice is necessary for democracy

• Man’s capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man’s inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.  Reinhold Niebuhr
• Justice

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The constant extension of democracy is necessary for democracy

• It is not enough to merely defend democracy. To defend it may be to lose it; to extend it is to strengthen it. Democracy is not property; it is an idea.  Hubert H. Humphrey
• If democracy is such a good thing, let’s have more of it.  Dick Gregory
• All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.  Al Smith

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More requirements for democracy

• Modern democracies will face difficult new challenges–fighting terrorism, adjusting to globalization, adapting to an aging society–and they will have to make their system work much better than it currently does. That means making democratic decision-making effective, reintegrating constitutional liberalism into the practice of democracy, rebuilding broken political institutions and civic associations. Perhaps most difficult of all, it requires that those with immense power in our societies embrace their responsibilities, lead, and set standards that are not only legal, but moral. Without this inner stuffing, democracy will become an empty shell, not simply inadequate but potentially dangerous, bringing with it the erosion of liberty, the manipulation of freedom, and the decay of a common life.  Fareed Zakaria
• Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.  Saul Alinsky
• I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. Walt Whitman
• To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.  Mahatma Gandhi
• Democracy without morality is impossible.  Jack Kemp
• Eternal Vigilance is the price of democracy.  Thomas Jefferson
• As long as the differences and diversities of mankind exist, democracy must allow for compromise, for accommodation, and for the recognition of differences.  Eugene McCarthy
• A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy.  Theodore Roosevelt
• The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart. Mahatma Gandhi
• Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.  Jesse Jackson
• A healthy democracy requires a decent society; it requires that we are honourable, generous, tolerant and respectful.  Charles W. Pickering
• I’m tired of hearing it said that democracy doesn’t work. Of course, it doesn’t work. We are supposed to work it.  Alexander Woollcott
• The greatest blessing of our democracy is freedom. But in the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.  Bernard Baruch

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Some argue democracy exists far more in principle than reality

• Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.  Woodrow Wilson
• Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.  Agnes Repplier
• Democracy, as has been said of Christianity, has never really been tried.  Stuart Chase
• In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.  Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Democracy is only a dream: it should be put in the same category as Arcadia, Santa Claus, and Heaven.  H. L. Mencken
• Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice, it is a fallacy.  Benito Mussolini
• Under capitalism, we can’t have democracy by definition. Capitalism is a system in which the central institutions of society are in principle under autocratic control.  Noam Chomsky
• Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.  Florence King
• Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.  Gore Vidal

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Not all are advocates of democracy …

• A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation’s paradise and its tomb.  Emil Cioran
• Democracy and equality try to deny the mystic recognition of difference and innate priority, the joy of obedience and the sacred responsibility of authority. D. H. Lawrence
• Democracy has become, unless I mistake, a kind of test or shibboleth, by which we try men and measures; and this is the same as to say that it is merely a word which is powerful with us, and not the wide and true notion of what the word means. But we must define the true import of words, and not be slaves to syllables; for democracy in form is not necessarily people-power in fact, but power perhaps of a few, who cajole the many and so lead and use the people for their own ends.  James Vila Blake
• The only distinction that democracies reward is a high degree of conformity.  Ambrose Bierce
• If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it. Mark Twain
• Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone’s slave.  Karl Kraus
• It has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity.  Alexander Hamilton
• Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.  P. J. O’Rourke
• Democracy is grounded upon so childish a complex of fallacies that they must be protected by a rigid system of taboos, else even halfwits would argue it to pieces. Its first concern must be to penalize the free play of ideas.  H. L. Mencken
• Democracy is an abuse of statistics.  Jorge Luis Borges
• The more I see of democracy the more I dislike it. It just brings everything down to the mere vulgar level of wages and prices, electric light and water closets, and nothing else.  D. H. Lawrence

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… and some are downright cynical about it

• Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.  Senator Soaper
• Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.  George Bernard Shaw
• Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.  Laurence J Peter
• Democracy is a system that gives people a chance to elect rascals of their own choice.  Doug Larson
• Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.   H. L. Meneken
• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.   HL Mencken
• Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.  Oscar Wilde
• Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.  George Bernard Shaw
• Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.  Alan Corenk
• Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.  Bertrand Russell
• In an autocracy one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.   Celia Green

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Democracy depends on the public being informed and sensible …

• Democracy depends on citizens being informed, and since our media, especially television (which is the most important source of news for most Americans) reports mostly what the people in power do, and repeats what the people in power say, the public is badly informed, and it means we cannot really say we have a functioning democracy.  Howard Zinn
• Americans are so enamoured of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom…. The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance. Alexis De Tocqueville
• In true democracy, every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.  Mahatma Gandhi

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… which, some argue, is often not the case

• Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.  John Simon
• Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don’t think.
• Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. H. L. Mencken
• Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.    E. B. White
• The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. Winston Churchill
• The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. Gustave Flaubert
• Does this mean that I am an opponent of democracy? Not at all. Fiction for fiction, it is the least harmful. But it is well not to confound its promises with realities. The fiction consists in the postulate of all democratic government, that the great majority of the electors in a state are enlightened, free, honest, and patriotic–whereas such a postulate is a mere chimera. The majority in any state is necessarily composed of the most ignorant, the poorest, and the least capable; the state is therefore at the mercy of accident and passion, and it always ends by succumbing at one time or another to the rash conditions which have been made for its existence. A man who condemns himself to live upon the tight-rope must inevitably fall; one has no need to be a prophet to foresee such a result.  Henri-Frederic Amiel
• Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.  Isaac Asimov
• But collective thinking is usually short-lived. We’re fickle, stupid beings with poor memories and a great gift for self-destruction. Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay
• As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.  H. L. Mencken
• No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.  H. L. Mencken
• Does history record any case in which the majority was right?  Robert A. Heinlein
• Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man. How’s that again? I missed something.  Robert A. Heinlein
• The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population — the intelligent ones or the fools?  Henrik Ibsen
• Democracy means government by the uneducated while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.   G.K. Chesterton
• Democracy:  A form of government by popular ignorance.

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Democracy, some say, is the rule of wolves over sheep

• Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses.   H. L. Mencken
• Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!  Benjamin Franklin
• Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. James Bovard
• Let the people think they govern, and they will be govern’d.  William Penn

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Democracy, some argue, is a kind of tyranny of the majority

• It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.  James Fenimore Cooper
• The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.  Lord Acton
• What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.  Walter Lippmann
• I honour the passion for power and rule as little in the people as in a king. It is a vicious principle, exist where it may. If by democracy be meant the exercise of sovereignty by the people under all those provisions and self-imposed restraints which tend most to secure equal laws, and the rights of each and all, then I shall be proud to bear its name. But the unfettered multitude is not dearer to me than the unfettered king.  William E. Channing
• Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it’s up to you to know with which ear you’ll listen.  Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
• The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.   Mahatma Gandhi
• After each war, there is a little less democracy left to save.  Brooks Atkinson

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Democracy is the least worst form of government …

• Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Winston Churchill
• Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. 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
• Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.  Robert A. Heinlein
• Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.  Jawaharlal Nehru

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… although some disagree

• The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination. Voltaire

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Public apathy is an enemy of democracy

• The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.  Robert Hutchins
• The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy. Charles de Montesquieu
• Apathy and indifference

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Oppression and tyranny is an enemy of democracy

• To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy.   Aung San Suu Kyi
• You don’t spread democracy with a barrel of a gun. Helen Thomas
• We should be more modest in our belief that we can impose democracy on a country through military force. In the past, it has been movements for freedom from within tyrannical regimes that have led to flourishing democracies; movements that continue today. This doesn’t mean abandoning our values and ideals; wherever we can, it’s in our interest to help foster democracy through the diplomatic and economic resources at our disposal. But even as we provide such help, we should be clear that the institutions of democracy – free markets, a free press, a strong civil society – cannot be built overnight, and they cannot be built at the end of a barrel of a gun. And so we must realize that the freedoms FDR once spoke of – especially freedom from want and freedom from fear – do not just come from deposing a tyrant and handing out ballots; they are only realized once the personal and material security of a people is ensured as well.  Barack Obama
• You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.  Gilbert K. Chesterton

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Excessive division and scare mongering is an enemy of democracy

• The sides are being divided now. It’s very obvious. So if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re suddenly anti-American. Its breeding fear of being on the wrong side. Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism.  Sam Shepard
• The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.  H. L. Mencken

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Excessive private power is an enemy of democracy

• The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.  Franklin D. Roosevelt
• The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.  Paul Wellstone

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Excessive inequality is an enemy of democracy

• We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both. Louis D. Brandeis
• An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.  Plutarch
• Equality

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Ignorance is an enemy of democracy

• The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.  John F. Kennedy
• Ignorance

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Excessive consensus is an enemy of democracy

• Consensus: The process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: ‘I stand for consensus?”  Margaret Thatcher

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In a democracy, the public gets what it deserves

• Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.  George Bernard Shaw
• Democracy’s worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.  Robert A. Heinlein
• Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.  Abraham Lincoln
• When people put their ballots in the boxes, they are, by that act, inoculated against the feeling that the government is not theirs. They then accept, in some measure, that its errors are their errors, its aberrations their aberrations, that any revolt will be against them. It’s a remarkably shrewd and rather conservative arrangement when one thinks of it.  John Kenneth Galbraith
• Democracy is that form of government where everybody gets what the majority deserves.   Davidson’s Maxim
• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.   H. L. Mencken

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Democracy and dictatorship

• The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness. Niels Bohr
• Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.  William Blum
• Democracy is alive, and like any other living thing it either flourishes and grows or withers and dies. There is no in-between. It is freedom and life or dictatorship and death.  Saul Alinsky
• Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.  Alan Corenk
• Democracy and dictatorship
• Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.  Plato
• The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship, you don’t have to waste your time voting.  Charles Bukowski
• Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.  Shimon Peres
• In the kingdom of consumption, the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption. The dictatorship of consumer goods has finally destroyed the barriers of blood, lineage and race. Raoul Vaneigem

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Democracy and socialism

• Democracy is the road to socialism.  Karl Marx
• Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. Alexis de Tocqueville
• Democracy is indispensable to socialism. Vladimir Lenin
• Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.  Jawaharlal Nehru
• Democracy is the wholesome and pure air without which a socialist public organization cannot live a full-blooded life.  Mikhail Gorbachev

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• A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won’t cross the street to vote in a national election.   Bill Vaughn
• A triumph for democracy; it proves that a millionaire has just as good a chance as anybody else.   Bob Hope
• America is a country which produces citizens who will cross the ocean to fight for democracy but won’t cross the street to vote.
• Democracy consists of choosing your dictators after they’ve told you what you think it is you want to hear.   Alan Coren
• Democracy is a form of government in which it is permitted to wonder aloud what the country could do under first-class management.   Doug Larson
• Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.   Dr. Laurence J. Peter
• Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.   Ed Byrne
• Democracy is like a tambourine – not everyone can be trusted with it.   John Oliver
• Democracy is mob rule but with income taxes.
• Democracy is that form of government where everybody gets what the majority deserves.   Davidson’s Maxim
• Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.   H. L. Mencken
• Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.   E.B. White
• Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.   H. L. Mencken
• Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.   Benjamin Franklin
• Democracy means government by discussion but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.   Clement Attlee
• Democracy means government by the uneducated while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.   G.K. Chesterton
• Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president.   Johnny Carson
• Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn’t grow up can be vice president.  JOHNNY CARSON
• Democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.   Isaac Asimov
• Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. James Bovard
• Democracy:  A form of government by popular ignorance.  Elbert Hubbard
• Democracy:  a government of bullies tempered by editors   Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Democracy:  The belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
• Democracy:  The worship of jackals by jackasses.
• Democracy: A small hard core of common agreement surrounded by a rich variety of individual difference.
• Democracy: A state of mind in which every man is as good as every other man provided he really is.
• Democracy: A system whereby the person who never votes can cuss out the man the other people elected.
• Democracy: In which you say what you like and do what you’re told.   Dave Barry
• Democracy: The worship of jackals by jackasses.   H. L. Mencken
• Georgie believed in democracy and he felt that everybody had a right to an opinion:  his.   George Burns
• I intend to open this country up to democracy and anyone who is against that I will jail.   Jo Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo
• In an autocracy one person has his way; in an aristocracy, a few people have their way; in a democracy, no one has his way.   Celia Green
• In democracy, it’s your vote that counts; In feudalism, it’s your count that votes.  Mogens Jallberg
• In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.   Orson Welles
• It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.   Winston Churchill
• It’s not the voting that’s democracy, it’s the counting.   Tom Stoppard
• The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.   Winston Churchill
• The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship, you don’t have to waste your time voting.   Charles Bukowski
• The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.   Art Spander
• Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule  – and both commonly succeed and are right.   H. L. Mencken

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