Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
Category: democracy
Running the circus
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
Collective wisdom
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
Protection against the mob
By liberty, I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom, and opinion.
Marxist breeding ground
Democracy, as practised in Western Europe today, is the forerunner of Marxism. In fact, the latter would not be conceivable without the former. Democracy is the breeding-ground in which the bacilli of the Marxist world pest can grow and spread.
The savagery of crowds
A crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realization of its desire.
The mentality of crowds
In crowds, it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated.
Illogic in crowds
A crowd thinks in images, and the image itself calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first … A crowd scarcely distinguishes between the subjective and the objective. It accepts as real the images invoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed facts … Crowds being only capable of thinking in images are only to be impressed by images.
Law above democracy
Constitutional rights may not be infringed simply because the majority of the people choose that they be.
The danger of private interests
If a majority are capable of preferring their own private interest, or that of their families, counties, and party, to that of the nation collectively, some provision must be made in the constitution, in favor of justice, to compel all to respect the common right, the public good, the universal law, in preference to all private and partial considerations … And that the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of history … To remedy the dangers attendant upon the arbitrary use of power, checks, however multiplied, will scarcely avail without an explicit admission some limitation of the right of the majority to exercise sovereign authority over the individual citizen … In popular governments [democracies], minorities [individuals] constantly run much greater risk of suffering from arbitrary power than in absolute monarchies …