c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When I got home, I seemed in a dream. My windows looked upon hers; I remained all the day looking at them, and all the day they were closed and dark. I forgot everything for this woman; I slept not, I eat nothing. That evening I fell into a fever, the next morning I was delirious, and the next evening I was DEAD!' 'Dead!' cried his hearers. 'Dead!' answered the narrator, with a conviction in his voice which words alone cannot give; 'dead as Fabian, the cast of whose dead face hangs from that wall!''Go on,' whispered the others, holding their breath.The hail still rattled against the windows, and the fire had so nearly died out, that they threw more wood on the feeble flame which penetrated the darkness of the studio and cast a faint light upon the pale face of him who told the story. ("The Dead Man's Story
— James Hain Friswell
MYTH: Beautiful Writing Trumps AllREALITY: Storytelling Trumps Beautiful Writing, Every Time
— Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence
Is this a kissing book?
— William Goldman
The store of fairy tales, that blue chamber where stories lie waiting to be rediscovered, holds out the promise of just those creative enchantments, not only for its own characters caught in its own plotlines; it offers magical metamorphoses to the one who opens the door, who passes on what was found there, and to those who hear what the storyteller brings. The faculty of wonder, like curiosity can make things happen; it is time for wishful thinking to have its due.
— Marina Warner, From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers
Each word was shaped with certainty, and I felt, more strongly than ever before in my life, that I had at last found my true path. I knew the story would change as I told it. No one can tell as tory without transforming it in some way; it is part of the magic of storytelling. Like the troubadors of the past, who hid their messages in poems, songs and fairy tales, I too would hide my true purpose [ … ] It was by telling stories that I would save myself.
— Kate Forsyth, Bitter Greens
...when an old person dies, a whole library disappears.
— Simone Schwarz-Bart
So there’s a freeing up that happens when I can go into that storytelling mode...It isn’t about how much sense you make, it is about how compelling you are. (interview)
— Nalo Hopkinson
Whether this tale be true or false, none can tell, for none were there to witness it themselves.
— Marjane Satrapi, The Sigh
To paraphrase Muggeridge: Everything is a parable that God is speaking to us, the art of life is to get the message.
— Chester Elijah Branch
I think if a story has a message it should be incidental and accidental, otherwise it leans too close to indoctrination.
— Karen Lord
When I get tired of new clunky writing, I resort to old fashioned story tellers, like Wilkie Collins.
— Sonia Rumzi
In stories, when someone behaves uncharacteristically, we take it as a meaningful, even pivotal moment. If we are surprised again and again, we have to keep changing our minds, or give up and disbelieve the writer. In real life, if people think they know you well enough not only to say, 'It's Tuesday, Amy must be helping out at the library today,' but well enough to say to the librarian, after you've left the building, 'You know, Amy just loves reading to the four-year-olds, I think it's been such a comfort for her since her little boy died'—if they know you like that, you can do almost anything where they can't see you, and when they hear about it, they will, as we do, simply disbelieve the narrator.
— Amy Bloom, A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
people don't really want original stories. they want different versions of the same story. this is called meta-narrative.
— Chester Elijah Branch, Holy Subtext: Meta-Narrative Trends in Cinema
Statements make sense for somebody who needs advice. I’m not giving advice. I don’t instruct. At my best, I delight. That’s my job.
— Ron Koertge
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
— Winston S. Churchill
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
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
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.
— Elmer T Peterson
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts, and beer.
— Abraham Lincoln
A vote is like a rifle: its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.
— Theodore Roosevelt
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
— Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
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 genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.
— Gore Vidal
I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice, or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
— John  Adams, The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. This it is the business of the State to effect, and on a general plan.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
The ballot is stronger than the bullet.
— Abraham Lincoln
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
— H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C Major
Does history record any case in which the majority was right?
— Robert A. Heinlein
The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.
— Robert A. Heinlein
Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.
— Simone Weil
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
— George Bernard Shaw
No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.
— H.L. Mencken, Gist of Mencken
It's not the voting that's democracy, it's the counting.
— Tom Stoppard, Jumpers
A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.
— Theodore Roosevelt, New Nationalism Speech by Teddy Roosevelt
High hopes were once formed of democracy
—  but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
But when the group is literally capable of changing our perceptions, and when to stand alone is to activate primitive, powerful, and unconscious feelings of rejection, then the health of these institutions seems far more vulnerable than we think.
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
— Abraham Lincoln
Gandhi is the other person. I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.
— Vandana Shiva
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, Minority Report
In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.
— Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War
When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, it becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues.
— Thomas L. Friedman
I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.
— William F. Buckley Jr.
it is the people who control the Government, not the Government the people.
— Winston S. Churchill
Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)
— Cornel West, Race Matters
And I apologize to all of you who are the same age as my grandchildren. And many of you reading this are the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country
Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is not enough to be electors only. It is necessary to be law-makers
—  otherwise those who can be law-makers will be the masters of those who can only be electors.
Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle.
— B.R. Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual
Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus'—blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable.
— Noam Chomsky, Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel's War Against the Palestinians
The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.
— Noam Chomsky, Hopes and Prospects
Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched,- criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, - this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society
— W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
The main problem in any democracy is that crowd-pleasers are generally brainless swine who can go out on a stage & whup their supporters into an orgiastic frenzy—then go back to the office & sell every one of the poor bastards down the tube for a nickel apiece.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Activism begins with you, Democracy begins with you, get out there, get active! Tag, you're it
— Thom Hartmann
How does paying people more money make you more money?It works like this. The more you pay your workers, the more they spend. Remember, they're not just your workers- they're your consumers, too. The more they spend their extra cash on your products, the more your profits go up. Also, when employees have enough money that they don't have to live in constant fear of bankruptcy, they're able to focus more on their work- and be more productive. With fewer personal problems and less stress hanging over them, they'll lose less time at work, meaning more profits for you. Pay them enough to afford a late model car (i.e. one that works), and they'll rarely be late for work. And knowing that they'll be able to provide a better life for their children will not only give them a more positive attitude, it'll give them hope- and an incentive to do well for the company because the better the company does, the better they'll do.Of course, if you're like most corporations these days- announcing mass layoffs right after posting record profits- then you're already hemorrhaging the trust and confidence of your remaining workforce, and your employees are doing their jobs in a state of fear. Productivity will drop. That will hurt sales. You will suffer. Ask the people at Firestone: Ford has alleged that the tire company fired its longtime union employees, then brought in untrained scab workers who ended up making thousands of defective tires- and 203 dead customers later, Firestone is in the toilet.
— Michael Moore, Stupid White Men
Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
— James Russell Lowell
I've handed life and death back to the people who do the living and the dying.
— Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination
I realized that this was the big secret of democracy -- that change can occur by starting off with just a few people doing something.
— Michael Moore, Here Comes Trouble
Traffic in Joburg is like the democratic process. Every time you think it's going to get moving and take you somewhere, you hit another jam.
— Lauren Beukes, Zoo City
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, 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, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.
— Alexander Fraser Tytler
People use democracy as a free-floating abstraction disconnected from reality. Democracy in and of itself is not necessarily good. Gang rape, after all, is democracy in action.All men have the right to live their own life. Democracy must be rooted in a rational philosophy that first and foremost recognizes the right of an individual. A few million Imperial Order men screaming for the lives of a much smaller number of people in the New World may win a democratic vote, but it does not give them the right to those lives, or make their calls for such killing right.Democracy is not a synonym for justice or for freedom. Democracy is not a sacred right sanctifying mob rule. Democracy is a principle that is subordinate to the inalienable rights of the individual.
— Terry Goodkind, Naked Empire
As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract
Remember something, if you will, about voting: Voting is not a horse race, you're not going there thinking "Gee, I gotta pick the winner so I can brag to my friends 'Oh, I picked so-and-so and he or she won'". Voting is voting your heart and voting your conscience and when you've done that, don't ever, EVER let a Democrat or Republican tell you that you've wasted your vote because the fact is, if you DON'T vote your heart and conscience then you HAVE wasted your vote.
— Jesse Ventura
I really am a pessimist. I've always felt that fascism is a more natural governmental condition than democracy. Democracy is a grace. It's something essentially splendid because it's not at all routine or automatic. Fascism goes back to our infancy and childhood, where we were always told how to live. We were told, Yes, you may do this; no, you may not do that. So the secret of fascism is that it has this appeal to people whose later lives are not satisfactory.
— Norman Mailer
When occasions present themselves in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests to withstand the temporary delusion in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection. Instances might be cited in which a conduct of this kind has saved the people from very fatal consequences of their own mistakes, and has procured lasting monuments of their gratitude to the men who had courage and magnanimity enough to serve them at the peril of their displeasure.
— Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist Papers
Those in power must spend a lot of their time laughing at us.
— Alice Walker
Every four years we go through the same cycle of hope and disillusionment.
— Sheri Holman, The Mammoth Cheese
It was not man who implanted in himself what is infinite and the love of what is immortal: those lofty instincts are not the offspring of his capricious will; their steadfast foundation is fixed in human nature, and they exist in spite of his efforts. He may cross and distort them – destroy them he cannot. The soul wants which must be satisfied; and whatever pains be taken to divert it from itself, it soon grows weary, restless, and disquieted amidst the enjoyments of sense.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America Volume 2
When a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too.
— Bill Moyers
If there is one fact we really can prove, from the history that we really do know, it is that despotism can be a development, often a late development and very often indeed the end of societies that have been highly democratic. A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.
— G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
Librarians consider free access to information the foundation of democracy.
— Marilyn Johnson, This Book Is Overdue!: How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All
DiMaggio's grace came to represent more than athletic skill in those years. To the men who wrote about the game, it was a talisman, a touchstone, a symbol of the limitless potential of the human individual. That an Italian immigrant, a fisherman's son, could catch fly balls the way Keats wrote poetry or Beethoven wrote sonatas was more than just a popular marvel. It was proof positive that democracy was real. On the baseball diamond, if nowhere else, America was truly a classless society. DiMaggio's grace embodied the democracy of our dreams.
— David Halberstam, Summer of '49
Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.
— G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America
Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.
— Aristotle
Socialism lost its way largely when it became decoupled from the processes of democracy. My vision of a socially just society is one that is deeply democratic, that allows people’s voices to be heard, where people actually govern. C.L.R James sometimes used the slogan “every cook can govern” to speak to the concept that there should be no hierarchies of power between those who lead and their constituencies. This idea is related to Antonio Gramsci’s argument that the goal of the revolutionary party is for every member to be an intellectual. That is, everyone has the capacity, has the ability to articulate a vision of reality and to fight for the realization of their values and goals in society. Gramsci is pointing toward the development of a strategy that is deeply democratic, one where we don’t have elitist, vanguardist notions of what society should look like, but have humility and the patience to listen to and learn from working class and poor people, who really are at the center of what any society is.
— Manning Marable
A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. The real reason for democracy is: Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
— C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns
Corporations are not legal “persons” with constitutional rights and freedoms of their own, but legal fictions that we created and must therefore control.
— Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam: How To Reverse America's Suicidal Consumer Binge - And Why We Must
Democracy is always an unfinished experiment, testing the capacity of each generation to live freedom nobly.
— George Weigel
Sometimes it seems that everybody in the world is in favor of democracy, just as long as it gives them the result they want.
— Jack Lessenberry
In the large sense, I have to disagree with Bakunin, one thing austerity rhetoric has suggested is that when the people are being beaten with a stick, they are much happier if the media call it the People’s Democratic Stick.
— Bruno De Oliveira
This is the permanent tension that lies at the heart of a capitalist democracy and is exacerbated in times of crisis. In order to ensure the survival of the richest, it is democracy that has to be heavily regulated rather than capitalism.
— Tariq Ali, The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad
I am a democrat [proponent of democracy] because I believe in the Fall of Man.I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. . . . I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation. . . .The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.
— C.S. Lewis, Present Concerns
Illiteracy does not impede the practice of democracy, as witnessed by the success of democracy in India despite the high illiteracy rate. One doesn't need a university diploma to realize that the ruler is oppressive and corrupt. On the other hand, to eradicate illiteracy requires that we elect a fair and efficient political regime.
— Alaa Al Aswany, شيكاجو
Man does not necessarily begin with despotism because he is barbarous, but very often finds his way to despotism because he is civilised. He finds it because he is experienced; or, what is often much the same thing, because he is exhausted
— G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man
...Surely the Board knows what democracy is. It is the line that forms on the right. It is the don’t in don’t shove. It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles; it is the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half the peopleare right more than half the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths,the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere. Democracy is a letter to the editor. Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth. It is an idea which hasn’t been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad. It’s the mustard on the hot dog and the cream in the rationed coffee.
— E.B. White
Democracy is a poor system
—  the only thing that can be said for it is that it's eight times as good as any other method.
They shouldnt teach their immigrants' kids all about democracy unless they mean to let them have a little bit of it, it ony makes for trouble. Me and the United States is dissociating our alliance as of right now, until the United States can find time to read its own textbooks a little.
— James  Jones, From Here to Eternity
Even if Zuma was to develop the authoritarian impulses of a Mugabe, he would be checked—not least by his own party, which set a continental precedent by ousting Thabo Mbeki in 2007, after it felt he had outstayed his welcome by seeking a third term as party president. The ANC appears to have set itself against that deathtrap of African democracy: the ruler for life.
— Mark Gevisser
I like it too," Angelo said. "I love this country. Much you and anybody, and you know it.""I know it," Prew said."But I still hate this country. You love the Army. But I dont love the Army. This country's Army is why I hate this country. What did this country ever do for me? Gimme a right to vote for men I cant elect? You can have it. Gimme a right to work at a job I hate? You can have that too. Then tell I'm a Citizen of the greatest richest country on earth, if I dont believe it look at Park Avenue. Carnival prizes. All carnival prizes. [..] They shouldnt teach their immigrants' kids all about democracy unless they mean to let them have a little bit of it, it ony makes for trouble. Me and the United States is dissociating our alliance as of right now, until the United States can find time to read its own textbooks a li
— James  Jones, From Here to Eternity
Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom; socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. 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.
— Tocqueville
For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither.
— Condoleezza Rice
Everything is argued over in this world. Apart from only one thing that is not argued over. Nobody argues about democracy. Democracy is there as if it was some sort of saint in the altar from whom miracles are no longer expected. But it’s there as a reference. A reference. Democracy. And no-one attends to the matter that the democracy in which we live is a democracy taken captive, conditioned, amputated. Because the power..the power of the citizen, the power of each one of us, is limited, in the political sphere, I repeat, in the political sphere, to remove a government that we do not like and replace it with another one that perhaps we might like in the future. Nothing else. But the big decisions are taken in a different sphere, and we all know which one that is. The big international financial organisations, the IMFs, the World Trade Organisations, the World Banks, the OECDs. All..not one of these entities is democratic. And so, how can we keep talking about democracy, if those who effectively govern the world are not chosen democratically by the people? Who chooses the representatives of each country in those organisations? Your respective peoples? No. Where then is the democracy?
— José Saramago
But a democracy is bound in the end to be obscene, for it is composed of myriad disunited fragments, each fragment assuming to itself a false wholeness, a false individuality. Modern democracy is made up of millions of frictional parts all asserting their own wholeness.
— D.H. Lawrence, Apocalypse
Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.
— Gaston Arman De Caillavet
Democracy is, among other things, the ability to say 'no' to the boss. But a man cannot say 'no' to the boss, unless he is sure of being able to eat when the boss's favour has been withdrawn.
— Aldous Huxley, Themes And Variations
Our contemporaries are constantly excited by two conflicting passions; they want to be led, and they wish to remain free: as they cannot destroy either one or the other of these contrary propensities, they strive to satisfy them both at once. They devise a sole, tutelary, and all-powerful form of government, but elected by the people. They combine the principle of centralization and that of popular sovereignty; this gives them a respite: they console themselves for being in tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians. Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large that holds the end of his chain.By this system the people shake off their state of dependence just long enough to select their master, and then relapse into it again. A great many persons at the present day are quite contented with this sort of compromise between administrative despotism and the sovereignty of the people; and they think they have done enough for the protection of individual freedom when they have surrendered it to the power of the nation at large. This does not satisfy me: the nature of him I am to obey signifies less to me than the fact of extorted obedience.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
The Republican and Democratic parties both feed out of the same bag provided by the monied system, and where the list frequently differs the same interests are represented.
— George Seldes
There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man. That is a perfectly simple fact which the modern world will find out more and more to be a fact. Every other basis is a sort of sentimental confusion, full of merely verbal echoes of the older creeds. Those verbal associations are always vain for the vital purpose of constraining the tyrant.
— G.K. Chesterton, What I Saw in America
It is extremely difficult to obtain a hearing from men living in democracies, unless it be to speak to them of themselves. They do not attend to the things said to them, because they are always fully engrossed with the things they are doing. For indeed few men are idle in democratic nations; life is passed in the midst of noise and excitement, and men are so engaged in acting that little remains to them for thinking. I would especially remark that they are not only employed, but that they are passionately devoted to their employments. They are always in action, and each of their actions absorbs their faculties: the zeal which they display in business puts out the enthusiasm they might otherwise entertain for idea.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and 'with malice toward none and charity for all' go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.
— Henry A. Wallace
As Elizabeth Blackmar and Ray Rosenzweig wrote in their magisterial history of [Central Park in NYC]: 'The issue of demoncratic access to the park has also been raised by the increasing number of homeless New Yorkers. Poor people--from the 'squatters' of the 1850s to the 'tramps' of the 1870s and 1890s to the Hooverville residents of the 1930s--have always turned to the park land for shelter...The growing visibility of homeless people in Central Park osed in the starkest terms the contradiction between Americans' commitment to democratic space and their acquiescence in vast disparities of wealth and power.
— Rebecca Solnit, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
When the Chief Justice read me the oath,' he [FDR] later told an adviser, 'and came to the words "support the Constitution of the United States" I felt like saying: "Yes, but it's the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy--not the kind of Constitution your Court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy.
— Susan Quinn, The Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times
The poor man retains the prejudices of his forefathers without their faith, and their ignorance without their virtues; he has adopted the doctrine of self-interest as the rule of his actions, without understanding the science which puts it to use; and his selfishness is no less blind than was formerly his devotedness to others. If society is tranquil, it is not because it is conscious of its strength and its well-being, but because it fears its weakness and its infirmities; a single effort may cost it its life. Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure. The desires, the repinings, the sorrows, and the joys of the present time lead to no visible or permanent result, like the passions of old men, which terminate in impotence.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
Another tendency, which is extremely natural to democratic nations and extremely dangerous, is that which leads them to despise and undervalue the rights of private persons. The attachment which men feel to a right, and the respect which they display for it, is generally proportioned to its importance, or to the length of time during which they have enjoyed it. The rights of private persons amongst democratic nations are commonly of small importance, of recent growth, and extremely precarious; the consequence is that they are often sacrificed without regret, and almost always violated without remorse.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
During my stay in the United States, I witnessed the spontaneous formation of committees in a country for the pursuit and prosecution of a man who had committed a great crime. In Europe, a criminal is an unhappy man who is struggling for his life against the agents of power, whilst the people are merely a spectator of the conflict: in America, he is looked upon as an enemy of the human race, and the whole of mankind is against him.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how men who have entirely given up the habit of self-government should succeed in making a proper choice of those by whom they are to be governed; and no one will ever believe that a liberal, wise, and energetic government can spring from the suffrages of a subservient people.
— Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
I was astonished, bewildered. This was America, a country where, whatever its faults, people could speak, write, assemble, demonstrate without fear. It was in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. We were a democracy...But I knew it wasn't a dream; there was a painful lump on the side of my head...The state and its police were not neutral referees in a society of contending interests. They were on the side of the rich and powerful. Free speech? Try it and the police will be there with their horses, their clubs, their guns, to stop you.From that moment on, I was no longer a liberal, a believer in the self-correcting character of American democracy. I was a radical, believing that something fundamental was wrong in this country--not just the existence of poverty amidst great wealth, not just the horrible treatment of black people, but something rotten at the root. The situation required not just a new president or new laws, but an uprooting of the old order, the introduction of a new kind of society--cooperative, peaceful, egalitarian.
— Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
If ideas and beliefs are to be denied validity outside the geographical and cultural bounds of their origin, Buddhism would be confined to north India, Christianity to a narrow tract in the Middle East and Islam to Arabia.
— Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear
Anarchism? You bet your sweet betsy. The only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy. Much more.
— Edward Abbey, Postcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast
Just the other day the AP wire had a story about a man from Arkansas who entered some kind of contest and won a two-week vacation--all expenses paid--wherever he wanted to go. Any place in the world: Mongolia, Easter Island, the Turkish Riviera . . . but his choice was Salt Lake City, and that's where he went. Is this man a registered voter? Has he come to grips with the issues? Has he bathed in the blood of the lamb?
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
Politicians tend only to like democracy when it is to their personal advantage(From LONE WOLF, p.50)
— Len Webster
Had I realized while on Earth," he said, "that Hell was such a delightful place, I should have put more faith in the teachings of religion. As it was, I actually doubted its existence. A foolish error, cherie. I am pleased to say that you have converted me completely.""I, too," observed Mr. Hamilton, helping himself to wine, "was something of an unbeliever in my time, and while never quite an atheist, like my arch-enemy Jefferson, I was still inclined to look upon Satan as merely a myth. Imagine my satisfaction to find him ruling a monarchy! You know I spent the greater part of my earthly existence fighting Mr. Jefferson and his absurd democratic ideas and now look at the damn country! Run by morons!
— Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr., Ladies in Hades: A Story of Hell's Smart Set & Gentlemen in Hades: The Story of a Damned Debutante
I feel obligated to point out, though, that I have always been a sucker for ideas I find aesthetically pleasing. The cosmic sweep of the thing - an interstellar kula chain - affirming the differences and at the same time emphasizing the similarities of all the intelligent races in the galaxy - tying them together, building common traditions... The notion strikes me as kind of fine.
— Roger Zelazny, Doorways in the Sand
[T]he success of democracy depends, in the end, on the reliability of the judgments we citizens make, and hence upon our capacity and determination to weigh arguments and evidence rationally.
— Irving M. Copi
Democracy: stored up in heaven
—  but unhappily has not yet been communicated to us.
Rebellion without reprisal is one of democracy's perks, right?
— Laura Kelly, Dispatches from the Republic of Otherness
[C]apitalism--democracy's sidekick
— Laura Kelly, Dispatches from the Republic of Otherness
If political rights are necessary to set social rights in place, social rights are indispensable to make political rights 'real' and keep them in operation. The two rights need each other for their survival; that survival can only be their joint achievement.
— Zygmunt Bauman, Collateral Damage: Social Inequalities in a Global Age
Violent ideologies speak their own language; core concepts are translated to maintain the system while appearing to support the people. Under carnism, for instance, democracy has become defined as having the freedom to choose among products that sicken our bodies and pollute our planet, rather than the freedom to eat our food and breathe our air without the risk of being poisoned. But violent ideologies are inherently undemocratic, as they rely on deception, secrecy, concentrated power, and coercion--all practices that are incompatible with a free society. While the larger system, or nation, may appear democratic, the violent system within it is not. This is one reason we don't recognize violent ideologies that exist within seemingly democratic systems; we simply aren't thinking to look for them.
— Melanie Joy, Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows: An Introduction to Carnism: The Belief System That Enables Us to Eat Some Animals and Not Others
When will people learn? Democracy doesn't work!" (Homer Simpson)
— Matt Groening
The changes that take place when liberal Democrats replace not so liberal or compassionate Republicans (or Democrats) are merely cosmetic. 
— David T. Dellinger
The problem with call-in shows is quite simple, if you only dare to admit it: Democracy is best when not everyone can be heard all the time. If we are constantly reminded of all the stupid things that people say and think, it becomes rather difficult to remember the good and noble arguments for everyone to be able to participate and decide.
— Johan Hakelius
A market economy is to economics what democracy is to government: a decent, if flawed, choice among many bad alternatives.
— Charles Wheelan, Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science
One look at the officials in the American Consulate where we went for dreary paper routines was enough to make you realize what was wrong with American 'diplomacy' throughout the Fellaheen world: - stiff offcious squares with contempt even for their own Americans who happened not to wear neckties, as tho a necktie or whatever it stands for meant anything to the hungry Berbers who came into Tangiers every Saturday morning on meek asses, like Christ, carrying baskets of pitiful fruit or dates, and returned at dusk to silhouetted parades along the hill by the railroad track. The railroad track where barefooted prophets still walked and taught the Koran to children along the way. Why didn't the American consul ever walk into the urchin hall where Mohammed Maye sat smoking? or squat in behind empty buildings with old Arabs who talked with their hands? or any thing? Instead it's all private limousines, hotel restaurants, parties in the suburbs, an endless phoney rejection in the name of 'democracy' of all that's pith and moment of every land.
— Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels
In the final analysis, what is it that we call popular, democratic power? Beyond the expressed will of the people, as it is supposedly formulated, there is no appeal; here we meet the absolute, the universal, the indivisible, and the immovable. There is nothing a priori, nothing anterior to democratic power; no ideas of truth, no notions of good or bad, can bind the Popular Will. This 'will' is free in the sense that it stands above all notions of value. It is egalitarian because it is reared on arithmetic equality..It is not open to any appeal, it listens to no demand for grace, no plea for compassion. Like the Sphinx, the Popular Will is immovable in its enigmatic silence.
— Tage Lindbom, The Myth of Democracy
Had he lived some centuries ago, in the brightly coloured civilizations of the past, he would have had a definite status, his rank and his income would have corresponded. But in his day the angel of Democracy had arisen, enshadowing the classes with leathern wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal--all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas...
— E.M. Forster, Howards End
To all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?
— Andy Zaltzman
Bill C-9 was supposed to be a budget bill, but it came with innumerable measures that had little or nothing to do with the nation's finances. It was, as critics put it, the advance of the Harper agenda by stealth, yet another abuse of the democratic process. The bill was a behemoth. It was 904 pages, with 23 separate sections and 2,208 individual clauses....As a Reform MP, [Stephen Harper] .... said of one piece of legislation that 'the subject matter of the bill is so diverse that a single vote on the content would put members in conflict with their own principles.' The bill he referred to was 21 page long -- or 883 pages shorter than the one he was now putting before Parliament.
— Lawrence Martin, Harperland: The Politics Of Control
Electorates tend to get the politicians they deserve.
— Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Politicians would only move beyond gestures once there was a critical mass of informed citizens.
— Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It
Charity erodes the cultural prerequisites for a vigorous democracy.
— Janet Poppendieck, Sweet Charity?: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement
India had a very long independence movement. It started in 1886, [with] the first generation of Western-educated Indians. They were all liberals. They followed the Liberal Party in Britain, and they were very proud of their knowledge of parliamentary systems, parliamentary manners. They were big debaters. They [had], as it were, a long apprenticeship in training for being in power. Even when Gandhi made it a mass movement, the idea of elective representatives, elected working committees, elected leadership, all that stayed because basically Indians wanted to impress the British that they were going to be as good as the British were at running a parliamentary democracy. And that helped quite a lot.
— Meghnad Desai
May it please your Majesty I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as the House is pleased to direct me whose servant I am here.
— William Lenthall
Attempts to thwart or muzzle the media continued as well. At a conservative caucus meeting in Charlottetown in August 2007, journalists assembled in the lobby of the hotel, as they usually do at such gatherings, to talk to caucus members as they passed by. The [Prime Minister's Office] communications team, however, was not prepared to allow it. Taking their cue, or so it appeared, from a police state, they had the RCMP remove the reporters from the hotel.
— Lawrence Martin, Harperland: The Politics Of Control