Barack Obama Quotes

A democracy is ... accounted the meanest and worst of all forms of government.

I think most of [people] are not very well educated themselves to understand the Winston Churchill line - democracy is the worst of all governments until you consider all the other ones.

I would like to have insights into things like government, all those big ideas that you brought up that I simply don't have ideas about. I would like to be able to since so many people discuss them, but I don't want to work at them. I don't think my ambition is that strong in that direction.

All government is an evil, but, of the two form's of that evil, democracy or monarchy, the sounder is monarchy; the more able to do its will, democracy.

How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?

Democracy is a very bad form of government ... but all the others are so much worse.

I don't have any insight or understanding on anything about the government. All I think is that it's stupid - which is the one perspective that's almost completely lacking in Washington.

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies.

I think [Winston] Churchill said it was " [democracy] the worst of all systems except for all the others." And that's probably true. It's never gone easily.

I believe all universities should at least offer courses in politics and policy implementation.

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

I hold them [politics] to be subject to laws as fixed as matter itself, and to be as fit a subject for the application of the highest intellectual power.

I've learned much more about politics than I thought I ever would.

The case for democracy is not esthetic.

All forms of government are pernicious, including good government.

I think democracy is not a destination. I don't think socialism is a railway station and if we catch the right train with the right driver, we'll get there. I think it's a way of thinking about things and every generation has to do it again.

Statesmen and legislators, standing so completely within the institution, never distinctly and nakedly behold it. They speak of moving society, but they have no resting-place without it. They may be men of a certain experience and discrimination, and have no doubt invented ingenious and even useful systems, for which we sincerely thank them; but all their wit and usefulness lie within certain not very wide limits. They are wont to forget that the world is not governed by policy and expediency.

Cynics who say power is all that counts in politics forget that power without ideas is just improvisation.

Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.

Who so taketh in hand to frame any state or government ought to presuppose that all men are evil, and at occasions will show themselves so to be.

We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them.

The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles.

The experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.

Even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror.

"Government," says Swift, "is a plain thing, and fitted to the capacity of many heads."