J.r. > J.r.'s Quotes

“I hate paying taxes. But I love the civilization they give me”
― Oliver Wendell. Holmes

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
― H.L. Mencken, On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

“Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
― Winston S. Churchill, Churchill Speaks: Collected Speeches in Peace and War, 1897-1963

“We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”
― Louis D. Brandeis

“Social conservatism and neoconservatism have revived authoritarian conservatism, and not for the better of conservatism or American democracy. True conservatism is cautious and prudent. Authoritarianism is rash and radical. American democracy has benefited from true conservatism, but authoritarianism offers potentially serious trouble for any democracy.”
― John W. Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience

“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, Minority Report

“In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
― H.L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy

“Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don't. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do.”
― Daniel Patrick Moynihan

“Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, &c. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Public access to government information is a fundamental prerequisite to a functioning democracy. A democratic system is based on the notion that government legitimacy requires the consent of the governed. To be meaningful that consent must be informed.”
― John Podesta

“Popular disregard, even disdain, for demonstrable truth is the most dangerous thing that can happen to a democracy.”
― Gordy Slack, The Battle Over the Meaning of Everything: Evolution, Intelligent Design, and a School Board in Dover, PA

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

“One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror. ”
― George W. Bush

“The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”
― James Madison

“War is not nice.”
― Barbara Bush

“Freedom is often the first casualty of war.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, The General in His Labyrinth

“The first casualty when war comes is truth.”
― Hiram Johnson