Democracy

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
        --John Adams

"A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments."
        --Aristotle

"The government of the absolute majority is but the government of the strongest interests; and when not effectively checked, is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised. [To read the Constitution is to realize that] no free system was ever farther removed from the principle that the absolute majority, without check or limitation, ought to govern."
        --John C. Calhoun

"To maintain the ascendancy of the Constitution over the lawmaking majority is the great and essential point on which the success of the [American] system must depend; unless that ascendancy can be preserved, the necessary consequence must be that the laws will supersede the Constitution; and, finally, the will of the Executive, by influence of its patronage, will supersede the laws ..."
        --John C. Calhoun

"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
        --Winston Churchill

"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried."
        --Winston Churchill

"There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust."
        --Demosthenes

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. ..[Eventually], the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public Treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy. . . The world's greatest civilizations have progressed through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from great courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependency back again to bondage."
        --Andrew Tyler Fraser

"All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and the well-born; the other the mass of the people ... turbulent and changing, they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the Government ... Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy."
        --Alexander Hamilton, speech to the Constitutional Convention concerning the United States Senate, 06/18/1787, quoted in the notes of Judge Yates

"Democracy is the only system that persists in asking the powers that be whether they are the powers that ought to be."
        --Sydney J. Harris

"When it becomes dominated by a collectivist creed, democracy will inevitably destroy itself."
        --F. A. Hayek

"While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty."
        --Charles Evans Hughes

"A government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns, not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city or small township, but by representatives chosen by himself and responsible to him at short periods."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote -- a very different thing."
        --Walter H. Judd

"The deadliest foe of democracy is not autocracy but liberty frenzied."
        --O.H. Kahn

"Democracy without morality is impossible."
        --Jack Kemp

"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions -- it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
        --Irving Kristol

"[T]he delegation of the government, in [a republic], to a small number of citizens elected by the rest . . . [is] to refine and enlarge the public views by passing them through the medium of a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interest of their country and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary or partial considerations."
        --James Madison

"[In a republic,] it is not the people themselves who make the decisions, but the people they themselves choose to stand in their places."
        --James Monroe

"Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame."
        --Laurence J. Peter

"The creed of our democracy is that liberty is acquired and kept by men and women who are strong and self-reliant, and possessed of such wisdom as God gives mankind -- men and women who are just, and understanding, and generous to others -- men and women who are capable of disciplining themselves. For they are the rulers and they must rule themselves."
        --Franklin D. Roosevelt, 10/28/44

"The merit of our Constitution was, not that it promotes democracy, but checks it."
        --Horatio Seymour

"Democracy is a form of government that substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few."
        --George Bernard Shaw

"There is little hope for democracy if the hearts of men and women in democratic societies cannot be touched by a call to something greater than themselves."
        --Margaret Thatcher

"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 the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."
        --E. B. White

"Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual."
        --Walter Williams