Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

Democracy is a daring concept - a hope that we'll be best governed if all of us participate in the act of government. It is meant to be a conversation, a place where the intelligence and local knowledge of the electorate sums together to arrive at actions that reflect the participation of the largest possible number of people.

All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people.

The views of several individuals are assuredly preferable to one man, even as the power of a number of men is of course greater than the power of one man.

The great postulate of our democracy is confidence in the common sense of the people and in their maturity of judgment, even on great issues—once they know the facts.

The evils of popular government appear greater than they are; there is compensation for them in the spirit and energy it awakens.

The democratic system is premised on trust in the masses' wisdom. We believe that the collective is wiser than its parts and that, at the end of the day, it shall make the right choices and take the right decisions.

I do not want the voice of the people shut out.

It's not the voting that's democracy; it's the counting.

Democracy consists of choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

I'm the one who initiated the democratic process.

Democracy is the art of thinking independently together.

We must reflect more on what democracy in the exercise of authority would mean. Is truth determined by a majority vote, only for a new 'truth' to be 'discovered' by a new majority tomorrow?

Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Voting should be the right of the great body of the society…an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

A democratic government must always be left free to be operated upon by the will of the majority of the time being. All that the government of the day can do is to ascertain what now appears to be the best principle.

Democracy requires that those who bear the consequences of decisions have enough knowledge to hold the decision-makers accountable.

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

A democracy is the name of a government of those who are ruling for their own advantage, in opposition to the rich, or to any specific people.

Our real disease ... is democracy.

Roosevelt understood that democracy requires persuasion and consent

Democracy can be noisy and messy. But it works.

… though the majority might be temporarily wrong, in the end, a majority that remained a majority over a period of years was usually right, and in our country, at least, we have been governed by the will of the majority. It has not meant, nor I surmise, does it mean in the present, the destruction of minorities …

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time. It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.