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Words of power, passion and persuasion about democracy, old and new
Aristotle
The basis of a democratic state is liberty; this, they affirm, is the great end of every democracy. One principle of liberty is for all to rule and be ruled in turn... It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot, and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.
Hannah Arendt
Representative government has in fact become oligarchic government... the age-old distinction between ruler and ruled which the [American and French] Revolution[s] had set out to abolish through the establishment of a republic has asserted itself again; once more, the people are not admitted to the public realm, once more the business of government has become the privilege of the few
David Hume
Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion.
Hanna Fenichel Pitkin
The arrangements we call ‘representative democracy’ have become a substitute for popular self-government, not its enactment. Calling them ‘democracy’ only adds insult to injury.
John Dewey
Democracy is a way of life controlled by a working faith in the possibilities of human nature... The democratic faith in human equality is belief that every human being, independent of the quantity or range of his personal endowment, has the right to equal opportunity with every other person for development of whatever gifts he has.
John Adams
Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either. … Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.
"There is no democracy"
A brief interview with a cleaning lady, at Palácio da Alvorada, the official residence of the president of Brazil, following the 2016 impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff - from Petra Costa's Edge of Democracy (2019)
"Actually, those guys hated democracy"
Anthropologist David Graeber talking about the origins of Democracy in the United States at Occupy Democracy on Parliament Square, Westminster