“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.”

— Alexander Fraser Tytler

The earliest known attribution of this quote was December 9, 1951, in what appears to be an op-ed piece in The Daily Oklahoman under the byline Elmer T. Peterson, [This is the Hard Core of Freedom, Elmer T. Peterson, Daily Oklahoman, 9 December 1951, 12A]. The quote has not been found in Tytler's work. It has also been attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville.
There are many variants circulating with various permutations of majority, voters, citizens, or public. Ronald Reagan is known to have used this in speeches, as reported in Loren Collins, "The Truth About Tytler http://lorencollins.net/tytler.html":
Other variants:
The American Republic will endure until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money.
Attributed

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 "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote …" by Alexander Fraser Tytler?

Alexander Fraser Tytler 3

Scottish advocate, judge, writer and historian 1747–1813

Related quotes

“I think we must reflect more on what democracy in the exercise of authority would mean. Is truth determined by a majority vote, only for a new 'truth' to be 'discovered' by a new majority tomorrow?”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

The Public Square, by Richard John Neuhaus, First Things 1996
1990s

“Democracy means that if this man, you, and I will be trapped on an island, we having a majority of votes will decide that you have to sleep with us. That's the Democracy. And with 2/3 votes we can even put that in the constitution.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Source: speech during a meeting in the R. Barbosa High School

“The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“A limited democracy might indeed be the best protector of individual liberty and be better than any other form of limited government, but an unlimited democracy is probably worse than any other form of unlimited government, because its government loses the power even to do what it thinks right if any group on which its majority depends thinks otherwise. If Mrs. Thatcher said that free choice is to be exercised more in the market place than in the ballot box, she has merely uttered the truism that the first is indispensable for individual freedom, while the second is not: free choice can at least exist under a dictatorship that can limit itself but not under the government of an unlimited democracy which cannot.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times http://coreyrobin.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/hayek-letter-to-the-times-july-11-1978.pdf (11 July 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s

“Democracies are dangerous forms of government. They always become dictatorships; and they almost always talk about this universal health care.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Garden of Eden

“Athenian democracy was different from the much later American form, not only because it was the expression of a single city-state but because it was a direct [democracy], rather than a representative democracy. To us, looking backwards, it may seem imprudent to invite all citizens to vote on all major initiatives, but Solon was right to appreciate that no Athenian freeman could allow himself to be left out of anything.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.IV The Politician and the Playwright: How to Rule

“Communism and socialism can be connected to a single major author—Marx—and assessed as deviations from, and implementations or negations of, Marx. Democracy is not amenable to a similar treatment; the towering, single major author on democracy does not exist.”

Giovanni Sartori (1924–2017) Italian journalist and political scientist

The Theory of Democracy Revisited (1987), 1. Can Democracy Be Just Anyting?

“Democracy must be lived and practiced every day. It entails much more than periodic voting, which in many cases is only pro forma, in the absence of public influence on the choice of candidates and scarce possibility of policy change.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

“Much more than periodic voting” – UN Independent Expert calls for more direct democracy worldwide http://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=20482&LangID=E.
2016, “Much more than periodic voting” – UN Independent Expert calls for more direct democracy worldwide

“Local participation is the number one need. That is democracy. Politicians talk about democracy, but there really is not much democracy. They are the ones who make the decisions, and they are the government. In this way, your democracy is diminished. Democracy is democracy not only through voting but through participation. The more participation there is, the more democracy is a reality. Until that pertains we can only say there is a move towards democracy, no real democracy in the world.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

The World Teacher for All Humanity (2007)

“Now as long as the people having their stuff taken away from them are in the minority and the majority feels that they get to benefit from more said taken stuff, you'll always be able to win that decision through a popular vote and claim the moral high ground through democracy.”

Steven Crowder (1987) American actor

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Alexander Fraser Tytler 3

Related quotes

Related topics