#racy

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them. ↗

— Joseph Brodsky

#censorship #illiteracy #reading #read

Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#civil-disobedience #democracy #dissent #law #protest

Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity. ↗

— Naomi Klein

#politics #voting #dignity

Beware the man of a single book. ↗

— St. Thomas Aquinas

#ignorance #illiteracy #limitation #ignorance

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. ↗

— Noam Chomsky

#democracy #propaganda #state #totalitarian #totalitarian state

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. ↗

— H.L. Mencken

#democracy

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

#democracy

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#democracy

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

#conservatism #democracy #politics #democracy

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy. ↗

— Elmer T Peterson

#misattributed-to-de-tocqueville #democracy