...when unchecked

"Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time."
-- WINSTON CHURCHILL, speech, Nov. 11, 1947

"The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment."
-- ROBERT HUTCHINS

"Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers."
-- ARISTOTLE

"Democracy is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequal alike."

-- PLATO

God's hand, like a sign-board, is pointing toward democracy, and saying to the nations of the earth, "This is the way: walk ye in it."
-- HENRY WARD BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
-- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

"Although our interests as citizens vary, each one is an artery to the heart that pumps life through the body politic, and each is important to the health of democracy."
-- BILL MOYERS, The Nation, Jan. 22, 2007

"The sides are being divided now. It’s very obvious. So if you’re on the other side of the fence, you’re suddenly anti-American. Its breeding fear of being on the wrong side. Democracy’s a very fragile thing. You have to take care of democracy. As soon as you stop being responsible to it and allow it to turn into scare tactics, it’s no longer democracy, is it? It’s something else. It may be an inch away from totalitarianism."
-- SAM SHEPARD, The Village Voice, Nov. 12, 2004

"There can be no daily democracy without daily citizenship."
-- RALPH NADER

"The ballot is stronger than the bullet."

-- ABRAHAM LINCOLN, speech, May 19, 1856

"The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter."

-- WINSTON CHURCHILL

"Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors."

-- RALPH WALDO EMERSON

"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious, or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and nowhere appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men, under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty."

-- JOHN ADAMS, letter to John Taylor, 1814

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