Monday, November 12, 2012

"The worst form of government..."

I've always thought Churchill's description of our form of government was the wisest way to think about it. David Koyzis provides that one along with others. After the last election I'm emotionally inclined to credit even the most cynical among them.
  • I do not know if the people of the United States would vote for superior men if they ran for office, but there can be no doubt that such men do not run. ― Alexis de Tocqueville
  • In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honoured that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office. ― Ambrose Bierce
  • Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ― H.L. Mencken
  • Democracy is being allowed to vote for the candidate you dislike least. ― Robert Byrne
  • Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. ― James Bovard
  • Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated. ― Gilbert K. Chesterton
  • Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. ― Sir Winston Churchill
  • Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor. ― James Russell Lowell
  • 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
  • The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois. ― Gustave Flaubert
  • Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. ― George Bernard Shaw
And I add this from former New York City Mayor Ed Koch when, after his defeat, he was asked whether he would run again: “No, the people have spoken — and they must be punished.”

Democracy ― as others see it » First Thoughts | A First Things Blog

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