Benjamin Harrison Quotes

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

Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.

America was founded on majority rule, not supermajority rule. Somehow, over the years, this has morphed into supermajority rule, and that changes things.

Logically, in a society ostensibly grounded on representative government, it would seem reasonable that a majority of the people in a State would elect a majority of that State’s legislators.

The Founding Fathers gladly sacrificed government that could provide speedy, effective, cohesive, and internally consistent policies. They opted for one that had a maximum number of veto points and checks and balances and protections against tyranny by particular officials or tyranny by selfish majorities.

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

Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule.

Constitutional democracy is a Western idea.

The majority prevails in a democracy, eventually.

I have a negative approach to democracy. I think it should be primarily a mechanism by which people can remove a bad leader.

A democracy is a compromise by its nature. It's not a dictatorship.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

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

Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.

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 as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate.

The basis of our political system is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government.

Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.

The litmus test of democracy is the subordination of military power to civilian authority …

Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers.

The American system is no longer a democracy. Democracy is based on accountability and it's not there now.

The federal constitution is perhaps the greatest of human experiments.

Democracy, which means despair of finding any Heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them.

Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.