Fall Of Democracy Quotes & Sayings

Democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is corrupted, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality. — Baron De Montesquieu

It is easy to fall into the trap of believing that democracy will improve the function of policy. — David Harsanyi

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

Democracy appears to be safer and less liable to revolution than oligarchy. For in oligarchies there is the double danger of the oligarchs falling out among themselves and also with the people; but in democracies there is only the danger of a quarrel with the oligarchs. No dissension worth mentioning arises among the people themselves. And we may further remark that a government which is composed of the middle class more nearly approximates to democracy than to oligarchy, and is the safest of the imperfect forms of government. — Aristotle.

If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy. — Michael Pare

I found a correlation between the spreading of democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise in slavery. Now, as countries, former Communist countries, became so-called democratic, people started to be enslaved by their own countrymen. — Loretta Napoleoni

Admit that the press transferred the pontificate of Rome to Henry VIII-Admit that the press demolished in some sort the feudal system, and set the serfs and villains free; admit that the press demolished the monasteries, nunneries, and religious houses; into whose hands did all these alienated baronies, monasteries, and religious houses and lands fall? Into the hands of the democracy? Into the hands of serfs and villains? Serfs and villains were the only real democracy in those time. No. They fell into the hands of other aristocrats ... — John Adams

The so-called Arab Spring has proved that the fall of a Mubarak-like presidency does not mean the immediate rise of democracy. In spite of this, I am confident that Egypt will not return to an authoritarian governing system again, and that, with some time, it will achieve its democratic goals. — Ahmed Zewail

The beauty of baseball is multidimensional, appealing to the eye and the mind. There is beauty, for instance, in its geometry, the space between the bases and the fielders; beauty in the arc of the season, which brings us out of doors to gather, until fall calls us back in; and beauty in its democracy, that each player hits in turn. But one of its greatest beauties is that, more than any other sport, it emboldens an expertise from those who watch it. Everybody can manage. That does not happen as easily in other sports. In — Tom Verducci

When the Furies were released in the Middle East, an evil emerged beyond my worst imaginings.
The joy of the Middle East has been replaced by fear, pervasive in Iraq and Syria and darkening the lives of people throughout the region. This is why refugees have been flowing out of the Middle East by the millions for Europe. If President Bush's seeds of democracy or the Arab Spring had bloomed, these families wouldn't be risking everything to leave. Many in the region have simply lost all hope, which is understandable. If you lived in Libya after the fall of Gadhafi, you'd be terrified. You can't work, you can't sell your goods, your children can't go to school, you can't even drive around without fear of being kidnapped by bandits or terrorists. It's not a place where people can be happy and even marginally prosperous. It's pure chaos. It's worse in Iraq and Syria. — Richard Engel

The world has witnessed the rise and fall of monarchy, the rise and fall of dictatorship, the rise and fall of feudalism, the rise and fall of communism, and the rise of democracy; and now we are witnessing the fall of democracy ... the theme of the evolution of life continues, sweeping away with it all that does not blossom into perfection. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

On January 17, 1991 and for the 43 days that followed, I watched CNN's live coverage of SCUD missiles and bombs fall over Baghdad like rain; then the 12 ½ years of unjust sanctions that killed approximately a million Iraqis, half of which were children under the age of five; then an unjust attack in 2003 that opened the borders to terrorists from all over the world and reduced the cradle of civilization to piles of rubble. The gov. asked us to support their plan or else be considered anti-American and undemocratic and they ask of us the same today, 25 years later, even though history proved they were pro-profit not pro-life. — Weam Namou

It is a mistake to apply American democratic procedures to the faith and the truth. You cannot take a vote on the truth. The value of democracy stands or falls with the values which it embodies and promotes. — Pope John Paul II

The end of democracy and the defeat of the American Revolution will occur when government falls into the hands of lending institutions and moneyed incorporations. — Thomas Jefferson

The multitudinous substitutes for indigenous culture cannot grow. Having no roots, they can only age and decay. Studious, sincere youth retires, defeated. American youth, capable of becoming serious competent artists, under such pressure as this on every side, confused, try not to give up
or "fall in line." This is the nature of about all that can be called American education in the arts and architecture at this time. As for religion true to the teaching of the great redeemer who said "The Kingdom of God is within you"
that religion is yet to come: the concept true not only for the new reality of building but for the faith we call democracy. — Frank Lloyd Wright

If the Soviet Union and its allies were allowed to continue subverting democracy with terrorism and fomenting so-called "wars of national liberation" in Central America, it wouldn't stop there: It would spread into the continent of South America and north to Mexico. Then, as I was told that Lenin once said: "Once we have Latin America, we won't have to take the United States, the last bastion of capitalism, because it will fall into our outstretched hands like overripe fruit ... — Ronald Reagan

If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself? — Wole Soyinka

Liberalism and Western-style democracy have not been able to help realize the ideals of humanity. Today, these two concepts have failed. Those with insight can already hear the sounds of the shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems ... Whether we like it or not, the world is gravitating towards faith in the Almighty and justice and the will of God will prevail over all things. — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Democracy is nothing more than an experiment in government, more likely to succeed in a new soil, but likely to be tried in all soils, which must stand or fall on its own merits as others have done before it. For there is no trick of perpetual motion in politics any more than in mechanics. — James Russell Lowell

Democracy must stand or fall on a platform of possible human perfectibility. If human nature cannot be improved by institutions, democracy is at best a more than usually safe form of political organization ... But if it is to work better as well as merely longer, it must have some leavening effect on human nature; and the sincere democrat is obliged to assume the power of the leaven. [Progressive] — Herbert Croly

I seek the spread of freedom and democracy in the way that satisfies God. [Americans] have planned and paved the ways for a long time, but it is God who is the real planner
and the proof of this is the fall of the American twin towers[ ... ]a miracle from God. — Muqtada Al Sadr

They know that as long as they keep us undereducated, or with an inferior education, it's impossible for us to compete with them for job openings. And as long as we can't compete with them and get a decent job, we're trapped. We are low-wage earners. We have to live in a run-down neighborhood, which means our children go to inferior schools. They get inferior education. And when they grow up, they fall right into the same cycle again. This is the American way. This is the American democracy that she tries to sell to the whole world as being that which will solve the problems of other people too. — Malcolm X

Without the continued existence of the democratic system and of publicly funded education and research, however, most current teachers and intellectuals would be unemployed or their income would fall to a small fraction of its present level. Instead of researching the syntax of Ebonics, the love life of mosquitoes, or the relationship between poverty and crime for $100 grand a year, they would research the science of potato growing or the technology of gas pump operation for $20 grand. — Hans-Hermann Hoppe

To justify such direct forms of imperialism and oppression, whites developed the IDEA of whiteness to define a privileged social category elevated above everyone who wasn't included in it. This made it possible to reconcile conquest, treachery, slavery, and genocide, with the nation's newly professed ideals of democracy, freedom, and human dignity. If whiteness define what it meant to be human, then it was seen as less off an offense against the Constitution (not to mention God) to dominate and oppress those who happened to fall outside that definition as the United States marched onward toward what was popularly perceived as its Manifest Destiny. — Allan G. Johnson

A democracy which fails to concentrate authority in an emergency inevitably falls into such confusion that the ground is prepared for the rise of a dictator. — Walter Lippmann

Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered ... or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power. — Stephen King

The Spartans were a paradoxical people. They were the biggest slave owners in Greece. But at the same time, Spartan women had an unusual level of rights. It's a paradox that they were a bunch of people who in many ways were fascist, but they were the bulwark against the fall of democracy. — Frank Miller

Any government, whether it is a democracy, a dictatorship, a communistic or free enterprise bureaucracy, will fall when its hierarchy reaches an intolerable state of maturity. — Laurence J. Peter

Other sovereign democratic states have central governments more corrupted other than our own, but most can fall back on unifying elements we lack: common ethnicity, a shared religion, or near-universal consensus on many fundamental political issues. The United States needs its central government to function cleanly, openly, and efficiently because it's one of the few things binding us together. — Colin Woodard

When they become slaves to thoughts that pull them down they fall into another kind of slavery and no one can emancipate them from such bondage as that except themselves - not even a Lincoln.
I say this because there is an increasing tendency among the youth of both races to assume that a system of government will unload them of all responsibilities for the care of aged parents, for sicknesses and accidents - often due to their own carelessness and neglect - and for their periods of unemployment, no matter how much their condition is due to laziness or failure to co-operate with others. I see this every day. 'Let the government do it,' they say, ignoring the fact that, in a democracy, they themselves help pay for the government's disbursements. It looks to me at this time as if they wish to declare not their independence, but their dependence upon the government from the cradle to the grave. — Thomas Calhoun Walker