Rick Santelli Quotes

Democracy is only tolerable because no other system is.

There's a big difference in a representative republic and a democracy. We do not have a democracy in America.

Democracy is but an experiment in the long history of the world.

Democracy is a good client.

Our country is blessed with a democratic political system that is sensitive to the wishes of our people.

We make a great mistake in supposing all people are capable of self-government.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Democracy, loudly upheld as a cure for much of the ailing world, has proved no guarantor of political wisdom, even if it remains the least bad form of government.

Now one of two things is true: Either a republic is a desirable form of government, or else it is not.

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.

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.

Democracy is a process.

The word democracy comes from the Greek and means, literally, government by the people.

The United States is dangerously close to becoming a democracy instead of a republic.

Democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy no one has his way.

Democracy is very powerful but very fragile.

Democracy is politics.

Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy.

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

People mistake majoritarianism for democracy.

No democracy pretends to be a tyranny. Most tyrannies pretend they are democracies. Democracy remains the definition of political legitimacy.

I draw a very clear distinction between populism and democracy.

I've made the comment that democracies work slower than dictatorships. That's a true thing.

[O]ur sages in the great [constitutional] convention... intended our government should be a republic which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism. The rigours of a despotism often... oppress only a few, but it is the very essence and nature of a democracy, for a faction claiming to oppress a minority, and that minority the chief owners of the property and truest lovers of their country.