Top 59 Democracy Tyranny Quotes
#1. Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest.
Hugo Chavez
#2. But if there's an erosion at home, you know, Thomas Jefferson warned about a tyranny of an oligarchy and if we surrender our democracy to the tyranny of an oligarchy, we've made a terrible mistake.
Pat Robertson
#3. Democracy was a terrifying concept for the old world of Europe, and even the new world of North America, where income inequality was rife. The finest minds of the nineteenth century warned against giving the vote to the workingman, for fear of mob rule or the tyranny of the majority.
George Megalogenis
#4. Democracy in itself does not define or guarantee a free society. History has told many stories of democratic societies that have degenerated into corruption, plunder, and tyranny.
Richard Ebeling
#5. My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.
Natan Sharansky
#6. Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen.
Ray Bradbury
#7. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence 'democracy,' and the other, 'tyranny.'.
Karl Popper
#8. They were taught about democracy in London, not about tyranny in Cairo.
Ken Follett
#9. Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.
Plato
#10. The degree of liberty or tyranny in any government is in large degree a reflection of the relative determination of the subjects to be free and their willingness and ability to resist efforts to enslave them.
Gene Sharp
#11. Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
John Kennedy Toole
#12. Ye that dare oppose, not only tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth!
Thomas Paine
#13. The right constitutions, three in number- kingship, aristocracy, and polity- and the deviations from these, likewise three in number - tyranny from kingship, oligarchy from aristocracy, democracy from polity.
Aristotle.
#14. Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.
Tony Blair
#15. Tyranny is usually tempered with assassination, and Democracy must be tempered with culture. In the absence of this, it turns into a representation of collective folly.
John Stuart Mackenzie
#16. Thus Tyrants could practice, in a sense, "democracy." But now "democracy" can do the same work without any tyranny other than her own.
C.S. Lewis
#17. I'm very proud that we stood for the proposition that no man, woman or child should ever have to live in tyranny. We believed in democracy and promoted it.
Condoleezza Rice
#18. Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
#19. The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
#20. The Tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy
is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.
Montesquieu
#21. The majority is by no means omniscient just because it is the majority. In fact, I've found that the line which divides majority opinion from mass hysteria is often so fine as to be virtually invisible.
J. Paul Getty
#22. Monarchy degenerates into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, and democracy into savage violence and chaos.
Polybius
#23. For tyranny is a kind of monarchy which has in view the interest of the monarch only; oligarchy has in view the interest of the wealthy; democracy of the needy: none of them common good of all.
Aristotle.
#24. The transition from tyranny to democracy is very hard. The Syrian people have to handle this in a way that works in Syria. And the brutality of the Assad regime is unacceptable.
Jacob Lew
#25. For any young democracy, the most difficult but important step is burying the legacy of tyranny and establishing an economy and a government and institutions that abide by the rule of law. Every country faces challenges to the rule of law, including my own.
Joe Biden
#26. The forces of moderation and democracy must, and will, prevail against extremism and dictatorship. I will not be intimidated ... Despite threats of death, I will not acquiesce to tyranny, but rather lead the fight against it.
Benazir Bhutto
#27. The perversions are as follows: of royalty, tyranny; of aristocracy, oligarchy; of constitutional government, democracy.
Aristotle.
#28. I am confident that in the end freedom and democracy will prevail over terror and tyranny. We will win this war on terror - and when we do Americans, the British, Iraqis, and people around the world will be more secure.
Doc Hastings
#29. Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.
Steven Pinker
#30. [D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.
-William F Buckley
William F. Buckley Jr.
#31. The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny.
Alexander Hamilton
#32. A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.
Norman Mailer
#33. To all the revolutionaries fighting to throw off the yoke of tyranny around the world: look at British democracy. Is that what you want?
Andy Zaltzman
#35. Democracy is a kingless regime infested by many kings who are sometimes more exclusive, tyrannical and destructive than one, even if he be a tyrant.
Benito Mussolini
#36. In Israel, free men and women are every day demonstrating the power of courage and faith. Back in 1948 when Isreal was founded, pundits claimed the new country could never survive. Today, no one questions that. Israel is a land of stability and democracy in a region of tyranny and unrest.
Ronald Reagan
#37. In every village there will arise a miscreant to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.
Robert Peel
#38. You can't start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relived when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.
John Steinbeck
#39. Let's win the peace and democracy the good people of Iraq so richly deserve after decades of tyranny.
Mike Pence
#40. Ultimately, freedom and democracy are stronger than fear and tyranny.
Gijs De Vries
#41. The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state.
Stewart Stafford
#42. Our ancestors wholeheartedly sacrificed their lives to fight against tyranny, and we are allowing that very same tyranny to exist! Let us open our eyes!
Yanan Melo
#43. Democracy gives the aura of legitimacy to acts that would otherwise be considered tyranny.
Walter E. Williams
#44. Democracy just isn't working any more; without sanity at its heart, it is becoming a most unique and fiendish tyranny.
Michael Leunig
#45. It is a truth widely recognized that tyranny stems from the consent of the governed as much as democracy does.
Eric Robert Morse
#47. To fight tyranny and oppression by using tyrannical and oppressive means, to combat a single-minded and ruthless fanaticism by becoming equally fanatical and ruthless, will not further the cause of justice or bring about a meaningful democracy. It can only prolong the cycle of violence.
Tariq Ali
#48. Democracy is better than tyranny.
Periander
#49. Democracy and tyranny are not distant relatives. They're bedfellows."
-General John James
Commandant, USMC
December 11th, 2032
L. Douglas Hogan
#50. The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government.
Walter E. Williams
#51. Democracy, which began by liberating man politically, has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion.
Ludwig Lewisohn
#52. Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)
Cornel West
#53. Democracy, then, in the centralizing, pattern-making, absolutist shape which we have given to it is, it is clear, the time of tyranny's incubation.
Bertrand De Jouvenel
#54. Masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny.
Aristotle.
#55. To be a film director is not a democracy, it's really a tyranny. You're the head of the project, for better rather than worse. I write the film and I direct the film, I decide who's going to be in it, I decide on the editing, I put in the music from my own record collection.
Woody Allen
#56. The act of voting by ordinary Iraqis in the face of extreme danger confirms President Bush's belief that people around the globe, when given a chance, will choose liberty and democracy over enslavement and tyranny.
John Ensign
#57. It seems to me a very real problem, to which I have never seen an answer even such as I shall attempt here, why a democracy should produce fads; and why, where there is so genuine a sense of human dignity, there should be so much of an impossible petty tyranny.
G.K. Chesterton
#58. I think it's very humble to believe that there is no man, woman or child who should live in tyranny. That people who say, well, maybe Arabs just aren't ready for democracy or maybe Africans just are going to have corrupt governments, that seems to me arrogant.
Condoleezza Rice
#59. Let us not be defeated by the tyranny of the world financial markets that threaten peace and democracy everywhere.
Stephane Hessel
