Thomas Babington Macaulay Quotes

Institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both.

A good constitution is infinitely better than the best despot.

The ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than the temporary failures of democracy.

Which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence democracy, and the other tyranny.

Concentration of executive power, unless it's very temporary and for specific circumstances, let's say fighting world war two, it's an assault on democracy.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty.

No truly sophisticated proponent of repression would be stupid enough to shatter the facade of democratic institutions.

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.

all government without the consent of the governed is the very definition of slavery

When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

The spectacle which confronts all Europe today is a great conflict between democracy and dictatorship.

A simple democracy is the devil's own government.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

Despotism subjects a nation to one tyrant; democracy, to many.

My message is simple - freedom works a lot better than the authoritarian style of government.

Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

My optimism is not based primarily on the successful march of democracy in recent times but rather is based on the experience of having lived in a fear society and studied the mechanics of tyranny that sustain such a society.

Despotism can only exist in darkness, and there are too many lights now in the political firmament to permit it to remain anywhere, as it has heretofore done, almost everywhere.

You can't become a dictator through checks and balances.