Does democracy mean voting for the people we choose to uphold our equal and individual rights? Or does democracy mean voting people into office to enforce rights for some while obliterating them for others? Throughout history, some of the wiser thinkers have grasped the distinction. Check out what they had to say.
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter. (Winston Churchill)
Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. (John Adams)
As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. (Abraham Lincoln)
Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. (James Bovard)
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. (H.L. Mencken)
“Democratic” in its original meaning [refers to] unlimited majority rule . . . a social system in which one’s work, one’s property, one’s mind, and one’s life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose. (Ayn Rand)
The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else. (Frédéric Bastiat)
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