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DEMOCRACy quotes
Intellectual superiority is so far from conciliating confidence that it is the very spirit of a democracy, as in France, to proscribe the aristocracy of talents! To be the favorite of an ignorant multitude, a man must descend to their level; he must desire what they desire, and detest all they do not approve: he must yield to their prejudices, and substitute them for principles. Instead of enlightening their errors, he must adopt them, and must furnish the sophistry that will propagate and defend them.
The history of the gospel has been the history of the development and growth of Christian democratic ideas.
The real democratic American idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other, but that every one shall have liberty, without hindrance, to be what God made him.
It is the most beautiful truth in morals that we have no such thing as a distinct or divided interest from our race.—In their welfare is ours; and by choosing the broadest paths to effect their happiness, we choose the surest and shortest to our own.
The devil was the first democrat.
Democracy will itself accomplish the salutary universal change from the delusive to the real, and make a new blessed world of us bye and bye.
The love of democracy is that of equality.
In every village there will arise some miscreant, to establish the most grinding tyranny by calling himself the people.
Lycurgus being asked why he, who in other respects appeared to be so zealous for the equal rights of men, did not make his government democratic rather than an oligarchy, replied, "Go you, and try a democracy in your own house."
If there were a people consisting of gods, they would be governed democratically; so perfect a government is not suitable to men.
Knowledge and goodness—these make degrees in heaven, and they must be the graduating scale of a true democracy.
Your little child is your only true democrat.
The progress of democracy seems irresistible, because it is the most uniform, the most ancient, and the most permanent tendency which is to be found in history.
"It is a great blessing," says Pascal: "to be born a man of quality, since it brings a man as far forward at eighteen or twenty as another would be at fifty, which is a clear gain of thirty years."— These thirty years are commonly wanting to the ambitious characters of democracies.—The principle of equality, which allows every man to arrive at everything, prevents all men from rapid advancement.
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