Montesquieu Quotes

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

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

In the United States, where the numerical majority have long been in full possession of collective despotism, they would probably be as unwilling to part with it as a single despot or an aristocracy.

The power should be in individual democracies in individual communities. It shouldn't be an oligarchy or some small group of elite. Power should be with the people and not with some politician or some heir to the throne or some madman.

It is not good to have a rule of many.

Democracy passes into despotism.

I shall ask no more than that you agree with Dean Inge that even though counting heads is not an ideal way to govern, at least it is better than breaking them.

Small natures require despotism to exercise their sinews, as great souls thirst for equality to give play to their heart.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity.

The American citizen must be made aware that today a relatively small group of people is proclaiming its purposes to be the will of the People. That elitist approach to government must be repudiated.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

Democracy is the form of government that gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

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

Be assured, fellow citizens, that in a democracy it is the laws that guard the person of the citizen and the constitution of the state, whereas the despot and the oligarch find their protection in suspicion and in armed guards.

That a peasant may become king does not render the kingdom democratic.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Where some people are very wealthy and others have nothing, the result will be either extreme democracy or absolute oligarchy, or despotism will come from either of those excesses.

Democracies in history always suffered from the necessity of uniting with much of the best in human nature a mass of ignorance and brutality lying at the bottom of all societies.

It is irrational for democratic government to treat all men as though they were politically equal.

The people who own the country ought to govern it.

The consent of the governed" is more than a safeguard against ignorant tyrants: it is an insurance against benevolent despots as well.

The ancient democracies, in which the people themselves deliberated, never possessed one feature of good government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure, deformity. When they assembled, the field of debate presented an ungovernable mob, not only incapable of deliberation, but prepared for every enormity.

A true democracy has never existed, and never will exist. It is against natural order that the great number should govern and that the few should be governed.

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

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