“For what democracy needs most of all is a party that will separate the good that is in it theoretically from the evils that beset it practically, and then try to erect that good into a workable system. What it needs beyond everything is a party of liberty.”

— H.L. Mencken

1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
Context: For what democracy needs most of all is a party that will separate the good that is in it theoretically from the evils that beset it practically, and then try to erect that good into a workable system. What it needs beyond everything is a party of liberty. It produces, true enough, occasional libertarians, just as despotism produces occasional regicides, but it treats them in the same drum-head way. It will never have a party of them until it invents and installs a genuine aristocracy, to breed them and secure them.

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 "For what democracy needs most of all is a party that will separate the good that is in it theoretically from the evils …" by H.L. Mencken?

H.L. Mencken 281

American journalist and writer 1880–1956

Related quotes

“Zaire's one-party system is the most elaborate form of democracy.”

Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre

Ayittey, p. 210

“They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Choruses from The Rock (1934)
Context: They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.

“What is needed is a strong shift leftwards. This party in Parliament ought to start the process, and if it won't, the party conference will do it for them”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Tribune, 1979
1970s

“Another evil, and one of the worst which arises from the separation of theoretical and practical knowledge, is the fact that a large number of persons”

William John Macquorn Rankine (1820–1872) civil engineer

"On the Harmony of Theory and Practice in Mechanics" (Jan. 3, 1856)
Context: Another evil, and one of the worst which arises from the separation of theoretical and practical knowledge, is the fact that a large number of persons, possessed of an inventive turn of mind and of considerable skill in the manual operations of practical mechanics, are destitute of that knowledge of scientific principles which is requisite to prevent their being misled by their own ingenuity. Such men too often spend their money, waste their lives, and it may be lose their reason in the vain pursuits of visionary inventions, of which a moderate amount of theoretical knowledge would be sufficient to demonstrate the fallacy; and for want of such knowledge, many a man who might have been a useful and happy member of society, becomes a being than whom it would be hard to find anything more miserable.
The number of those unhappy persons — to judge from the patent-lists, and from some of the mechanical journals — must be much greater than is generally believed.<!--p. 176

“All that evil needs to triumph is the silence of good men.”

Jean Ziegler (1934) Swiss sociologist

“The reality of a democracy is that the political party with a majority in Parliament has the mandate to run the country for a selected number of years because of popular choice - that is the nature of good democracy. "The other political parties are left as opposition parties as alternative Government.”

Manasa Tugia Fijian politician

Parliamentary speech, 5 August 2003

“That party will go down to all time as the party that failed Australia in her hour of need.”

Billy Hughes (1862–1952) Australian politician, seventh prime minister of Australia

Source: Regarding the Australian Labor Party, as quoted in a speech https://electionspeeches.moadoph.gov.au/speeches/1917-billy-hughes during the 1917 federal election campaign (27 March 1917)