Mads Mikkelsen Quotes

Demagogues are the mob's lackeys.

There's never been an era absent of demagogues.

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

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

…a low and dangerous demagogue.

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

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

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

You never discount a demagogue.

Demagoguery is not unknown in American history.

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

Preaching doom and gloom has been beneficial to the political class. They use it to gain more power and control.

It is a paradox that every dictator has climbed to power on the ladder of free speech. Immediately on attaining power each dictator has suppressed all free speech except his own.

Propaganda is to a democracy what violence is to a dictatorship.

Government by blackmail is incompatible with democracy.

Politics is the art of dominating men.

The delusion of the people is necessary to the dominant party. I see the extent to which that delusion has been already carried, and I see there is no length to which it may not be pushed by a party in possession of the revenues and the legal authorities of the United States

A dictator ... must fool all the people all the time and there's only one way to do that, he must also fool himself.

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.

Anyone who gets to the top in politics is a control freak.

Every dictator uses religion as a prop to keep himself in power.

A democracy doesn’t use force to control its citizens; it uses propaganda instead.

By exploiting envy and fear, politicians can portray themselves as the saviors and protectors of the public — doing and saying whatever is necessary to gain the support needed to remain in power.

De Gaulle has all the characteristics to be a dictator.

The word "education" has an evil sound in politics; there is a pretense of education, when the real purpose is coercion without the use of force.