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
