Democracy?As Others See It

With the recent presidential election behind us, it may behoove us to pay attention to the wisdom of the past relative to the form of government we know as democracy:

I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run.
? Alexis de Tocqueville

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honoured that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.
? Ambrose Bierce

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.
? H.L. Mencken

Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least.
? Robert Byrne

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
? James Bovard

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.
? Gilbert K. Chesterton

Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
? Sir Winston Churchill

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.
? James Russell Lowell

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right.
? H. L. Mencken

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.
? Gustave Flaubert

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
? George Bernard Shaw