A collection of quotes on the topic of democracy, people, governance, government.
“Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!”
“Democracy, republics: What do these words signify?”
Interview with Oriana Fallaci in The Chicago Tribune (24 June 1973).
Context: Democracy, republics: What do these words signify? What have they changed in the world? Have men become better, more loyal, kinder? Are the people happier? All goes on as before, as always. Illusions, illusions. Besides, one should consider the interest of a nation before subverting it with words. Democracy is necessary in some cases and We believe some African peoples might adopt it. But in other cases it is harmful, a mistake.
“In a democracy, leaders must resemble people, not monarchs.”
Source: 1480 AM Rock&Pop. Guadalajara, Mexico
“Liberty instead of Democracy!”
Freiheit statt Demokratie!
Interview in Junge Freiheit (24 June 2005) http://www.jf-archiv.de/archiv05/200526062409.htm
“Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism”
“Concerning the International Situation,” Works, Vol. 6, January-November, 1924, pp. 293-314.
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
Context: Social democracy is objectively the moderate wing of fascism.... These organisations (ie Fascism and social democracy) are not antipodes, they are twins.
“Democracy owed its life to know-how.”
Source: Player Piano (1952), Chapter 1 (p. 9)
Context: During the war, in hundreds of Iliums over America, managers and engineers learned to get along without their men and women, who went to fight. It was the miracle that won the war — production with almost no manpower. In the patois of the north side of the river, it was the know-how that won the war. Democracy owed its life to know-how.
“Democracy is the road to socialism.”
Attributed to Marx in recent years, including in Communism (2007) by Tom Lansford, p. 48, but the earliest occurrence of this yet located is in The Communist Review (1952) by the Communist Party of Great Britain, p. 15, where it is used to characterize the Communist agenda.
Disputed
“In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve.”
It was Joseph de Maistre who wrote in 1811 "Every nation gets the government it deserves."
Misattributed
“Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.”
The Reason and the objective of Education Reform
Source: The State and Revolution (1917), Ch. 5
Context: Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich – that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the "petty" – supposedly petty – details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for "paupers"!), in the purely capitalist organization of the daily press, etc., etc., – we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10, if not 99 out of 100, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.
As quoted in Albert Speer's diary entry for 26 December 1950 recalling a conversation with Hitler in January 1943, published in Spandau: The Secret Diary (2000), p. 167
1940s
Interview http://veja.abril.com.br/240210/candidata-conquista-ninho-p-050.shtml to Veja magazine, February 24.
2010
Responding http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiyezo1fLRs to Senator José Agripino Maia - former member of ARENA, ruling party of the military dictatorship - in a Senate hearing, May 7. He suggested that, for having lied when she was interrogated by the political police, she could also have been lying about the leak of data of Fernando Henrique Cardoso's personal expenditures.
2008
“On National-Socialist Germany And Her Contribution Towards Peace.” Speech to the representatives of the international press at Geneva on September 28. 1933. German League of Nations Union News Service, PRO, FO 371/16728. Included within Völkerbund: Journal for International Politics, Ausgaben 1-103, 1933, p.16
1930s
As quoted in Freedom: A New Analysis (1954) by Maurice William Cranston, p. 112
“Democracy is a system in which heads are counted but not weighed.”
Quoted from Elst, Koenraad. Hindu dharma and the culture wars. (2019). New Delhi : Rupa.
"On the Principles of Political Morality that Should Guide the National Convention in the Domestic Administration of the Republic" (5 February 1784/18 Ploviôse Year 2)
“It is not Socialism that subverts democracy, but democracy that subverts capitalism.”
Source: Democracy for the Few (2010 [1974]), sixth edition, Chapter 17, p. 320
"Don't Let Colonel Blimp Ruin the Home Guard" article for the Evening Standard, 8 January 1941
Context: Even as it stands, the Home Guard could only exist in a country where men feel themselves free. The totalitarian states can do great things, but there is one thing they cannot do: they cannot give the factory-worker a rifle and tell him to take it home and keep it in his bedroom. THAT RIFLE HANGING ON THE WALL OF THE WORKING-CLASS FLAT OR LABOURER'S COTTAGE, IS THE SYMBOL OF DEMOCRACY. IT IS OUR JOB TO SEE THAT IT STAYS THERE.
12 September 1848, "Discours prononcé à l'assemblée constituante le 12 Septembre 1848 sur la question du droit au travail", Oeuvres complètes, vol. IX, p. 546 https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Tocqueville_-_%C5%92uvres_compl%C3%A8tes,_%C3%A9dition_1866,_volume_9.djvu/564; Translation (from Hayek, The Road to Serfdom):
Original text:
La démocratie étend la sphère de l'indépendance individuelle, le socialisme la resserre. La démocratie donne toute sa valeur possible à chaque homme, le socialisme fait de chaque homme un agent, un instrument, un chiffre. La démocratie et le socialisme ne se tiennent que par un mot, l'égalité; mais remarquez la différence : la démocratie veut l'égalité dans la liberté, et le socialisme veut l'égalité dans la gêne et dans la servitude.
1840s
"Reflections on State and War" (2 December 2006) http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe17.html
The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944)
Source: The Essential Reinhold Niebuhr: Selected Essays and Addresses
Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Source: Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917
2015, Remarks to the Kenyan People (July 2015)
Source: Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty (1995), p. 18
That was their merit as propaganda against the Japanese.
Tezuka Osamu and American Comics http://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/, (1973), as quoted by Ryan Holmberg, The Comics Journal, Jul 16, 2012.
Statement (8 November 1998)
1990s
"Remarks to the United Nations General Assembly in New York City," September 23, 2010. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=88483&st=&st1=
2010
[The Ideals of Islam, 13 February 2014, Madras, 1918, p. 167]
1964 Memorial Edition, p. 265 http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations/Profiles-in-Courage-quotations.aspx
Pre-1960, Profiles in Courage (1956)
“A modern, harmonic and lively architecture is the visible sign of an authentic democracy.”
In 'The Observer' (London), 'Sayings of the Week'
On National-Socialism, Bolshevism & Democracy (September 10, 1938) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-national-socialism-bolshevism-and-democracy
1930s
Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption, London: Quercus Publishing, 2006, ISBN 1905204965, p. 195
Attributed
The Great Dictator (1940), The Barber's speech
Context: I'm sorry, but I don't want to be an emperor. That's not my business. I don't want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone, if possible, Jew, gentile, black man, white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other's happiness — not by each other's misery. We don't want to hate and despise one another.
In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.
The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world — millions of despairing men, women and little children — victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. To those who can hear me, I say — do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed — the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people and so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Soldiers! Don't give yourselves to brutes — men who despise you — enslave you — who regiment your lives — tell you what to do — what to think or what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder. Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men — machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate! Only the unloved hate — the unloved and the unnatural!
Soldiers! Don't fight for slavery! Fight for liberty! In the 17th Chapter of St. Luke it is written: "the Kingdom of God is within man" — not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people have the power — the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power! Let us all unite! Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth the future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie! They do not fulfill their promise; they never will. Dictators free themselves, but they enslave the people! Now, let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness.
Soldiers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!
[Cheers]
Hannah, can you hear me? Wherever you are, look up, Hannah. The clouds are lifting. The sun is breaking through. We are coming out of the darkness into the light. We are coming into a new world, a kindlier world, where men will rise above their hate, their greed and brutality. Look up, Hannah. The soul of man has been given wings, and at last he is beginning to fly. He is flying into the rainbow — into the light of hope, into the future, the glorious future that belongs to you, to me and to all of us. Look up, Hannah. Look up.
"No, Not One," The Adelphi (October 1941)
See his later thoughts on this statement below from "As I Please," Tribune (8 December 1944)
“Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.”
As quoted in World Marxist Review : Problems of Peace and Socialism (1958), p. 40
Context: Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself. We talk of the good of society. Is this something apart from, and transcending, the good of the individuals composing it? If the individual is ignored and sacrificed for what is considered the good of the society, is that the right objective to have?
It was agreed that the individual should not be sacrificed and indeed that real social progress will come only when opportunity is given to the individual to develop, provided "the individual" is not a selected group but comprises the whole community. The touchstone, therefore, should be how far any political or social theory enables the individual to rise above his petty self and thus think in terms of the good of all. The law of life should not be competition or acquisitiveness but cooperation, the good of each contributing to the good of all.
"Politics and the English Language" (1946)
Context: The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable". The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Petain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.
“Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.”
Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 64.
Context: My critique of democracy begins and ends with this point. Kids must be educated to disrespect authority or else democracy is a farce.
2010-02-03
Obama's Philosophically Fascist State of the Union Address
Townhall.com
https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2010/02/03/obamas-philosophically-fascist-state-of-the-union-address-n1331445
There are many other options of organization for the future than those typically discussed today... In order to accomplish this task one must be free of bias and nationalism, and reflect those qualities in the design of policies. How would you approach that? This is a difficult project requiring input from many disciplines.
Source: Designing the Future (2007), p. 6-7
2011, Remarks by the President to Parliament in London, United Kingdom (May 2011)
Source: 1860s, Speech at Hartford (1860)
Context: So with John Brown and Harper's Ferry. They charge it upon the Republican party and ignominiously fail in all attempts to substantiate the charge. Yet they go on with their bushwhacking, the pack in full cry after John Brown.
“The very design of neoliberal principles is a direct attack on democracy.”
Source: Hopes and Prospects
Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 16: Ideas Which Have Become Obsolete, p. 158
Source: 1950s, New Hopes for a Changing World (1951)
Written speech fragment presented by to the Chicago Veterans Druggist's Association in 1906 by Judge James B. Bradwell, who claimed to have received it from Mary Todd Lincoln. Collected Works, 2:532 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=lincoln;cc=lincoln;view=text;idno=lincoln2;rgn=div1;node=lincoln2%3A547
Posthumous attributions
“Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.”
interview on WBAI, January 1992 http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/199201--.htm.
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994
Variant: Propaganda is to democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
Source: Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda
Context: Harold Laswell … explained a couple of years after this in the early 1930s that we should not succumb to what he called democratic dogmatisms about men being the best judges of their own interests.… In what's nowadays called a totalitarian state, military state or something, it's easy. You just hold a bludgeon over their heads, but as societies become more free and democratic you lose that capacity and therefore you have to turn to the techniques of propaganda. The logic is clear—propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state….
Context: Walter Lippmann … described what he called “the manufacture of consent” as “a revolution” in “the practice of democracy”... And he said this was useful and necessary because “the common interests” - the general concerns of all people - “elude” the public. The public just isn't up to dealing with them. And they have to be the domain of what he called a "specialized class" … [Reinhold Niebuhr]'s view was that rationality belongs to the cool observer. But because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith. And this naive faith requires necessary illusion, and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which are provided by the myth-maker to keep the ordinary person on course. It's not the case, as the naive might think, that indoctrination is inconsistent with democracy. Rather, as this whole line of thinkers observes, it is the essence of democracy. The point is that in a military state or a feudal state or what we would now call a totalitarian state, it doesn't much matter because you've got a bludgeon over their heads and you can control what they do. But when the state loses the bludgeon, when you can't control people by force, and when the voice of the people can be heard, you have this problem—it may make people so curious and so arrogant that they don't have the humility to submit to a civil rule [Clement Walker, 1661], and therefore you have to control what people think. And the standard way to do this is to resort to what in more honest days used to be called propaganda, manufacture of consent, creation of necessary illusion. Various ways of either marginalizing the public or reducing them to apathy in some fashion.
“Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.”
2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)
Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power
“A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy.”
Source: New Nationalism Speech by Teddy Roosevelt
The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1891)
Context: All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.”
1940s–present, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
Source: A Mencken Chrestomathy
“To be a citizen in a democracy, a human being must be given a healthy start.”
Source: A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power
“The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.”
2014, Statement on Cuban policy (December 2014)
the seizure of Bologna
Source: Fascism: What It Is and How to Fight It (1944), Ch. 2
2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)
Wear and Tears (tableu of a ageless world)
Specters of Marx (1993)
stated in the early 1990s, as quoted in "Towards a Community of Values?" by Hans-Georg Betz – in Austria in the European Union (2003), p. 434
His reaction to the abolition of princes’ Privy purses by Indira Gandhi, p. 206
Profiles of Indian Prime Ministers
Interview with Alex Haley
On the role of the press in a democracy
2017, Final News Conference as President (January 2017)
Quoted in Evans, 2002, p. 13, as reported in Fundamentals of action research, Vol. I (2005), p. 305.
The Failure of Haile Selassie as Emperor in The Blackman, April, 1937.
Voprosi Leninizma, Gosudarstvennoe izdatelstvo politicheskoy literaturi, (1939)
Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
2014, Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative Town Hall (April 2014)
James Tobin, "Keynes' Policies in Theory and Practice", Challenge (1983).
1970s and later
Quoted in New African (IC Magazines Limited, 2003), p. 25.
Source: Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1862/aug/01/the-administration-of-viscount in the House of Commons (1 August 1862).
Source: The Permanent Revolution (1929), Ch. 10
2014, 25th Anniversary of Polish Freedom Day Speech (June 2014)
No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)
Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 3, p. 25
Manufacturing Consent, lecture at the University of Wisconsin (15 March 1989) https://chomsky.info/19890315/.
Quotes 1960s-1980s, 1980s
2012, Yangon University Speech (November 2012)
2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)
Prologue: Grove summarized his first twenty years of life in Hungary in his memoirs.
New millennium, Swimming Across: a Memoir, 2001
Speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool (3 October 1946), quoted in The Times (4 October 1946), p. 2.
On National-Socialism, Bolshevism & Democracy (September 10, 1938) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-national-socialism-bolshevism-and-democracy
1930s
Nicolas Sarkozy: Victory speech excerpts http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6631125.stm 6 May 2007
Speech at a Florida Republican dinner, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (April 28, 1970); reported in Collected Speeches of Spiro Agnew (1971), p. 135.
2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)
Source: Violence and Social Orders (2009), Ch. 4 : Open Access Orders
The Theory of Democracy Revisited (1987), 1. Can Democracy Be Just Anyting?
Barbara Isenberg (2012) Conversations with Frank Gehry. p. 268.
Opposition leader Lee Kuan Yew, Legislative Assembly Debates, Sept 21, 1955
1950s
Source: Nancy I. Lieber, Institute for Democratic Socialism (U.S.) (1982) Eurosocialism and America: political economy for the 1980s. p. 222.
1990s, Letter to the Union-Sun & Journal (1992)
2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)
