Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Democracy is politics.

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

It is not good to have a rule of many.

Democracy is a good client.

Democracy is only tolerable because no other system is.

Our nation has in 300 years grown apart from even the democratic ideals of other peoples. In some of them class government still lingers; in others, democracy is little better than oligarchy.

Democracy is very powerful but very fragile.

American democracy must be a failure because it places the supreme authority in the hands of the most ignorant part of society.

The elite interests must not crowd out the interests of the citizens.

The majority of people wherever found ought in all questions to govern the minority.

It is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?

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

What the world of the twenty-first century calls democracy is in fact the fusion of two distinct political traditions. One is liberty—that is individual freedom. The other is popular sovereignty: rule by the people.

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

The principle of democracy is all about delegation of power by the vast majority of citizens through a few chosen representatives chosen on merit and competence.

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

She had got to the bottom of this business of democratic government and found out that it was nothing more than government of any other kind.

A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.

A democracy, when put to the strain, grows weak; and it is supplanted by oligarchy [rule by the few].

It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or counsuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is a legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa.

The people are the masters.

What is democracy?—an aristocracy of blackguards.