It’s odd how those who dismiss the peace movement as utopian don’t hesitate to proffer the most absurdly dreamy reasons for going to war: to stamp out terrorism, install democracy, eliminate fascism, and, most entertainingly, to “rid the world of evildoers.”
—Arundhati Roy
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
—H. L. Mencken
To give up the task of reforming society is to give up one's responsibility as a free man.
—Alan Paton
Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.
—Laurence J. Peter
I confess I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing.
—H. L. Mencken
Most of us continue to work for wages in a highly unequal social system that denies us meaningful work and a decent return for our labor. That simple fact defines a set of common interests of immense democratic potential.
—Charles Bergquist
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
—Winston Churchill
Vote for the man who promises least; he'll be the least disappointing.
—Bernard Baruch
Democracy means that anyone can grow up to be president, and anyone who doesn't grow up can be vice president.
—Johnny Carson
The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
—Gustave Flaubert
We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.
—Louis D. Brandeis
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
Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them.
—Paul Valéry
An enormous conflict between words and deeds is prevalent today: everyone talks about freedom, democracy, justice, human rights, about peace and saving the world from nuclear apocalypse; and at the same time, everyone, more or less, consciously or unconsciously, serves those values and ideals only to the extent necessary to serve himself and his "worldly" interests, personal interests, group interests, power interests, property interests, and state or great-power interests.… So the power structures apparently have no other choice than to sink deeper into this vicious maelstrom, and contemporary people apparently have no other choice than to wait around until the final inhibition drops away. But who should begin? Who should break this vicious circle? Responsibility cannot be preached but only borne, and the only possible place to begin is with oneself.
—Vaclav Havel
There is no democracy in any love relation: only mercy.
—Gillian Rose