"Democracy is a government where you can say what you think even if you don't think." - Anonymous
"Democracy is the rule of the mob. It's surprising how highly the concept is held." - David Braginsky
"Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what it is you want to hear." - Alan Coren
"There is indeed a manly and legitimate passion for equality which rouses in all men a desire to be strong and respected. This passion tends to elevate the little man to the rank of the great. But the human heart also nourishes a debased taste for equality, which leads the weak to want to drag the strong down to their level and which induces men to prefer equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. It is not that peoples with a democratic social state naturally scorn freedom; on the contrary, they have an instinctive taste for it. But freedom is not the chief and continual object of their desires; it is equality for which they feel an eternal love; they rush on freedom with quick and sudden impulses, but if they miss their mark they resign themselves to their disappointment; but nothing will satisfy them without equality, and they would rather die than lose it" - Alexis DeToqueville, Democracy in America
"I don't believe in absolute unfettered majority rule, and neither did the founders. The government is assumed to express the will of the people, and the Constitution imposes substantial limits on what the government can do, and thus what centralized authority is capable of doing to carry out the wishes of the people, precisely to minimize the tyranny of the majority. The primary limit is that the majority not be permitted to silence minority opinions, or to impose orthodoxy of thought or behavior on individuals. We call that "liberty", and it can only exist if we have the legal ability to think, speak and act in ways which do not agree with our neighbors. If my neighbor wants to dye his hair green and wear a ring in his nose, I may think that he looks damned stupid but I also believe it's his right, even if I might find it offensive." - Steven Den Beste
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote." - Benjamin Franklin
"People who fetishize voting forget that voting is merely a mechanical means to an end, not an end in itself." - Jonah Goldberg
"The fact is that democracy does not spring fully formed from the head of Zeus but rather is an epiphenomenon - the formal icing on a pre-existing cake of egalitarianism, economic opportunity, religious tolerance and constant self-criticism. The former cannot appear in the Muslim world until gallant men and women insist upon the latter - and therein demolish the antidemocratic and medieval forces of tribalism, authoritarian traditionalism and Islamic fundamentalism.How much easier for nonvoters of the Arab world to vent frustration at the West, as if, in some Machiavellian plot, a democratic America, Israel and Europe have conspired to prevent Muslims from adopting the Western invention of democracy! Democracy is hardly a Western secret to be closely guarded and kept from the mujahideen. Islam is welcome to it, with the blessing and subsidy of the West. Yes, we must promote democracy abroad in the Muslim world; but only they, not we, can ensure its success." - Victor Davis Hanson
"The difference between Las Vegas and Washington DC is that in Vegas, the drunks are gambling with their own money." - Jay Leno
"Personally, I’m interested in keeping other people from building Utopia, because the more your believe you can create heaven on earth the more likely you are to set up guillotines in the public square to hasten the process." - James Lileks
"Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority." - James Madison, Federalist 10
"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H.L. Mencken
"Children often recite the mantra "majority rule." And in fact majority rule is appropriate for use by children - for the exact reason that we do not permit children to decide important issues." - Ron Merrill
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." - H.L. Mencken
"A lot of people voting for Pat Buchanan say they are doing so to send a message. Apparently that message is, 'Hey, look at me, I'm an idiot.'" - Dennis Miller
"Let me reiterate, if you’re such a complete zipper-head that you cannot maneuver your way around a chad, then guess what? I don’t want you to vote because you’ll vote stupid and I’m not talking about run of the mill stupidity here either. I’m talking about weapon-grade stupidity. It’s a chad. Deal with it. While you’re at it, if you do happen to have a pipe cleaner for a brain stem, maybe you ought to practice getting in and out of the shower before you go to the polling place. Because you certainly don’t want to put yourself in harm’s way entering and exiting the steel vault that is the voting booth." - Dennis Miller
"Looking at Capitol Hill is like looking at that Escher picture of the wild geese flying together: makes no fucking sense and occasionally shits on your head." - Dennis Miller
"You know what? I don’t believe there are voters out there who can’t figure out how to vote. I think for the most part if you’re that big a moron you tend to stay home on election day and hurt yourself trying to TiVo the Quick Draw McGraw marathon on the cartoon channel because Baba Looey sounds just like the voice in your head." - Dennis Miller
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." - P.J. O'Rourke
"The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge piñata - a papier-mâché donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budget and other goodies. The American voter is blindfolded and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some sense into the silly bastard." - P.J. O'Rourke
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." - Ronald Reagan
"There ought to be one day - just one - where there is open season on senators." - Will Rogers
"There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism." - Theodore Roosevelt
"Can people who can't be bothered to register in advance, or to mark their ballots correctly in the voting booth, be trusted with preserving a nation and a heritage for which many Americans before them have fought and died? Can people whose mental level is so low that they must be accompanied into the voting booth by caretakers be given responsibility for making historic decisions for others when they are not even able to be responsible for themselves?" - Thomas Sowell
"No matter how disastrously some policy has turned out, anyone who criticizes it can expect to hear: 'But what will you replace it with?' When you put out a fire, what do you replace it with?" - Thomas Sowell
"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves? If people by a plebiscite elect a man despot over them, do they remain free because the despotism was of their own making?" - Herbert Spencer
"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power." - John Steinbeck