It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.
Category: demagogues
The best argument for small government
The United States was supposed to have a limited government because the founders knew government power attracts demagogues and despots as surely as horse manure attracts horseflies.
Beware the cure
Most of the problems of this country are not nearly as bad as the “solutions” — especially the solutions that politicians come up with during election years.
Helping themselves
When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear. People with careers as ethnic leaders usually tell their followers what they want to hear.
How demagogues work
Intellectuals may like to think of themselves as people who ‘speak truth to power,’ but too often they are people who speak lies to gain power.
Trading down
If we become a people who are willing to give up our money and our freedom in exchange for rhetoric and promises, then nothing can save us.
The pretense of caring
The great inlet by which a color for oppression has entered into the world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another.
Traitors
No punishment, in my opinion, is too great for a man who can build his greatness upon his country’s ruin.
Don’t be talked out of your liberties
Be not intimidated … nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.
Demagogues and bureaucrats
He who is unfit to serve his fellow citizens wants to rule them.