Sourced and curated.

The basis of a democratic state is liberty.

Aristotle

Politics · 350 BC

★ 8.1

Parties must ever exist in a free country.

Edmund Burke

On Conciliation with America · 1775

★ 7.0

Poem · Satire

For who can be secure of private right, If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might? Nor is the people's judgement always true: The most may err as grossly as the few.

John Dryden

Absalom and Achitophel · 1681

★ 6.9

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man's ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy.

Francis Fukuyama

The End of History? · 1989

★ 6.9

Well, the people have spoken-the bastards.

Dick Tuck

1966

★ 6.8

Thus not only does democracy make every man forget his ancestors, but it hides his descendants and separates his contemporaries from him; it throws him back forever upon himself alone and threatens in the end to confine him entirely within the solitude of his own heart.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 6.2

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Socrates

Plato, Republic · 375 BC

★ 5.7

Democratic nations care but little for what has been, but they are haunted by visions of what will be; in this direction their unbounded imagination grows and dilates beyond all measure.... Democracy, which shuts the past against the poet, opens the future before him.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Democracy in America · 1840

★ 5.4

Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slaves.

Herbert Marcuse

One-Dimensional Man · 1964

★ 5.3

In a racially divided society majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy.

Lani Guinier

1992

★ 5.3

A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water.

Fisher Ames

1795

★ 5.1

For if liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.

Aristotle

Politics · 350 BC

★ 3.9

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The Social Contract · 1762

★ 3.9

It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted.

Walt Whitman

Democratic Vistas · 1871

★ 3.9

Letter

When the masses get involved in reasoning, everything is lost.

Voltaire

1766

★ 3.8

What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love?

John Adams

Inaugural Address of John Adams · 1797

★ 3.8

Speech · Political speech · Historical literature

Our constitution is named a democracy, because it is in the hands not of the few but of the many. But our laws secure equal justice for all in their private disputes, and our public opinion welcomes and honors talent in every branch of achievement, not for any sectional reason but on grounds of excellence alone. And as we give free play to all in our public life, so we care the same spirit into our daily relations with one another... Open and friendly in our private intercourse, in our public acts we keep strictly within the control of law. We acknowledge the restraint of authority, and to the laws, more especially to those which offer protection to the oppressed and those unwritten ordinances whose transgression brings admitted shame.

Pericles

Thucydides, Funeral Oration, History of the Peloponnesian War · 430 BC

★ 3.7

Letter

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

Edmund Burke

1777

★ 3.7

Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.

James Madison

Federalist 10 · 1787

★ 3.7

It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

James Madison

Federalist 39 · 1788

★ 3.7

We may define a republic to be, or at least may bestow that name on, a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people, and is administered by persons holding their offices during pleasure, for a limited period, or during good behavior.

James Madison

Federalist 39 · 1788

★ 3.7

It rests now with ourselves alone to enjoy in peace and concord the blessings of self-government, so long denied to mankind: to shew by example the sufficiency of human reason for the care of human affairs and that the will of the majority, the Natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man.

Thomas Jefferson

1790

★ 3.7

Letter

Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide.

John Adams

1814

★ 3.7

Personal journal

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy.

Abraham Lincoln

1858

★ 3.7

The democratic aspiration is no mere recent phase in human history. It is human history. It permeated the ancient life of early peoples. It blazed anew in the Middle Ages. It was written in Magna Charta.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Third Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1941

★ 3.7

Film · Biography (film) · Biography

Elections of any kind are fucking bourgeois affectation.

Cleve Jones

Milk · 2008

★ 3.7

Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgement; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

Edmund Burke

1774

★ 3.6

Personal journal

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.

Brooks Atkinson

1951

★ 3.6

Political literature · Economic literature

No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in a functioning democracy.

Amartya Sen

Development as Freedom · 1999

★ 3.6

Supreme Court opinion · Legal writing

Campaign promises are-by long democratic tradition-the least binding form of human commitment.

Antonin Scalia

2002

★ 3.6

Novel

In every well-governed state, wealth is a sacred thing; in democracies it is the only sacred thing.

Anatole France

1908

★ 3.5

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

H.L. Mencken

1916

★ 3.5

Democracy is a method of finding proximate solutions for insoluble problems.

Reinhold Niebuhr

1944

★ 3.5

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

Reinhold Niebuhr

1944

★ 3.5

Poem

Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?

Bertolt Brecht

1956

★ 3.5

Interview · Magazine

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.

William F. Buckley

1961

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives.

Felix Frankfurter

Baker v. Carr · 1962

★ 3.5