“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.”

— E. B. White

The New Yorker (3 July 1943); reprinted as "Democracy" in The Wild Flag (1946)
Context: We received a letter from the Writers' War Board the other day asking for a statement on "The Meaning of Democracy." It is presumably our duty to comply with such a request, and it is certainly our pleasure. 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, the dent in the high hat. Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of 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 the 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. Democracy is a request from a War Board, in the middle of the morning in the middle of a war, wanting to know what democracy is.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the …" by E. B. White?

E. B. White 54

American writer 1899–1985

Related quotes

“Why walk with half measures, animals know much more than people, above all because they feel more freely than most of these and, therefore, as Kafka says, they are possessors of all the knowledge about this life. They are just too humble to show it off.”

José Baroja (1983) Chilean author and editor

Original: Para qué andar con medias tintas, los animales saben mucho más que las personas, ante todo porque sienten con más libertad que la mayoría de estas y, por ello, como dice Kafka, son poseedores de todo el conocimiento acerca de esta vida. Solo que son muy humildes para hacer gala de ello.
Source: Baroja, José. (2020). "Orfeo". En El lado oscuro de la sombra y otros ladridos. Lima: Ediquid, ISBN:978-980-7641-67-8; p. 40.

“It's nice to see something more pathetic than I feel right now.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Choke

Source: Choke

“Most people, at a crisis, feel more loyalty to their nation than to their class.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1930s, Power: A New Social Analysis (1938), Ch. 8: Economic Power

“Never was an age more sentimental, more devoid of real feeling, more exaggerated in false feeling, than our own.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

“For the first half of your life each minute feels like a year, but for the second half, each year feels like a minute.”

Melanie Gideon (1964)

Source: Wife 22

“The more I think it over, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in Vincent's letter, from Arles, Tuesday, 18 September 1888; as cited in Van Gogh : The Self-portraits (1969) by Fritz Erpel, p. 17
Variant translations: The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
As quoted in Mary Engelbreit's Words To Live By (1999) by Mary Engelbreit
I tell you the more I think, the more I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
1880s, 1888
Variant: There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

“It is not half so important to know as to feel.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

“When trust is lost, traumatized people feel that they belong more to the dead than to the living.”

Judith Lewis Herman (1942) American psychiatrist

Source: Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“People who leave groups generally sell less records. I feel better and more worthwhile selling less than the last Bunnymen record. I feel more important.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Rolling Stone (1990)

“Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Variant: ... I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live...

“Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.”

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

E. B. White 54

Related quotes

Related topics