Quotes on Democracy

Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.
   — Agnes Repplier

...the 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.
   — Alex Carey

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.
   — Alexis de Tocqueville

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
   — Mahatma Gandhi

If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent.
   — Henry Commager

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

On account of being a democracy and run by the people, we are the only nation in the world that has to keep a government four years, no matter what it does.
   — Will Rogers

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
   — E. B. White

The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.
   — Edward Dowling

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
   — C. S. Lewis