Diogenes Quotes

There's never been an era absent of demagogues.

You never discount a demagogue.

Demagoguery is not unknown in American history.

Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

The idea that democracies could be vulnerable to demagogues is not a new notion.

Trump manipulates the fearful by promising that he will use his fraudulent deal-making prowess to protect and take care of his supporters.

The art of politics, under democracy, is simply the art of ringing it. Two branches reveal themselves. There is the art of the demagogue, and there is the art of what may be called, by a shot-gun marriage of Latin and Greek, the demaslave. They are complementary, and both of them are degrading to their practitioners. The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. The demaslave is one who listens to what these idiots have to say and then pretends that he believes it himself.

…a low and dangerous demagogue.

In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

in countries where the ability to read and write has been recently acquired or where the people have had no long experience in governing themselves on the basis of their own thinking, it is easy for demagogues to arise and prostitute the mind of the common man to their own base ends

There is a line in which populism can cross over into demagoguery. Demagoguery is the crossover where populism becomes a bad thing, and people make things up, and they assign responsibilities that aren't fair and justified, and scapegoat communities. And then it becomes a very bad thing.

Down with politics and the art of the possible; up with pronouncements and the allure of the prophetic: It's the way of demagogues everywhere.

Where you don't have people who have strong intellectual capacity, you get demagoguery.

I think my main concern is because I worry about demagoguery. It's real. You see the people standing up there and applauding.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

Everyone wants to demagogue everyone else. That may be good politics, but it's awful policy.

The demagogue ... is a good showman, whether at Nuremberg at a youth conference, or in Georgia at a political barbecue. He knows the tricks of the ham actor, the gestures, the tones of voice that can arouse passions. Always he dresses himself up as the little man come to life, grown to Brobdingnagian stature and become the "Duce" or the "Leader" or, maybe, "Ploughboy Pete.

Unfortunately in this country we now have a demagogue ... one that is reckless with the truth.

Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

The Big Lie: Hitler Invented It. Stalin Perfected It. Nixon Uses It.

Since men must always assign a cause to all their misfortunes, the generally blame them on the evil intent of their rulers; … As always there are now many who fish in troubled waters, filling the minds of the commonality with the notion that things will go from bad to worse unless they appoint a head over them.

The successful demagogue is a powerful genie who, when once let out of his bottle, refuses to obey anyone's command. As long as his spell holds, he defies God Himself, and Satan is turned loose upon the world.

Truth is not the first casualty of war alone: it is the first casualty of populism.