Lapham’s Quarterly

Do you suppose it possible to know democracy without knowing the people?

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant, democracy to many.

Television is democracy at its ugliest.

In a true democracy, everyone can be upper-class and live in Connecticut.

The people are the foundation of the state. If the foundations are firm, the state will be tranquil.

Democracy cannot be static. Whatever is static is dead.

Vox populi, vox humbug.

Nothing but a permanent body can check the imprudence of democracy.

I have often been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it.

An election is coming. Universal peace is declared, and the foxes have a sincere interest in prolonging the lives of the poultry.

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletariat to the level of bourgeois stupidity.

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

Everyone else is represented in Washington by a rich and powerful lobby, it seems. But there is no lobby for the people.

Oh, democracy! Whither are you leading us?

Despotism achieves great things illegally; democracy doesn’t even take the trouble to achieve small things legally.

The only equals are those who are equally rich.

What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence, the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Whenever in history equality appeared on the agenda, it was exported somewhere else, like an undesirable.

Some to the common pulpits, and cry out / “Liberty, freedom, and enfranchisement!”

If the people be the governors, who shall be governed?

The most may err as grossly as the few.

What touches all shall be approved by all.

The king times are fast finishing. There will be blood shed like water, and tears like mist; but the peoples will conquer in the end.

So many men, so many opinions.

The worship of opinion is, at this day, the established religion of the United States.

An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which way one wishes to die.

Democracy, like the human organism, carries within it the seed of its own destruction.

Democracy produces both heroes and villains, but it differs from a fascist state in that it does not produce a hero who is a villain.

Even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.

It is hell to belong to a suppressed minority.

I have always been of the mind that in a democracy, manners are the only effective weapons against the bowie knife.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

The world is wearied of statesmen whom democracy has degraded into politicians.

In America, everybody is, but some are more than others.

When we define democracy now, it must still be as a thing hoped for but not seen.

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.

Let the people think they govern, and they will be governed.