James H. Billington Quotes

... as an observer of the actual condition of Egyptian society, I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that popular government, as we understand it, is for a longer time than anyone can foresee at present out of the question. The people neither comprehend it nor desire it. They would come to singular grief if they had it.

Don't expect that we can have democracy overnight ... democracy should be taken on a gradual basis until the people understand each step.

Not all countries are ready for it [democracy].

I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.

I have a lot of respect for countries where the practice of democracy is highly developed. I think, however, that each country has to have its own specific features of democracy.

As I understand I took most so-called democratic states about 200 years on average to build their democracies. That is why, when we go to sleep under totalitarian rule and wake up in a democracy, it makes me laugh.

Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

Democracies do not begin and end with elections.

Nobody expects democracy to be efficient--individual freedom was the primary purpose of our founders - but it should function at least a little

... a cure for the evils of universal democracy.

America is essentially and radically a democracy, not in name merely but in deed.

American democracy is at its best in its talent for the transfer for power.

I think democracy is a universal idea and I think letting people rule themselves happens to be something that serves America and America’s interests.

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

Democracy is finished in England.

A sense of nationhood does not prepare a people for instant democracy.

Democracy is not an end but the means to the conquest of the new state. When the time comes, either Parliament submits or we will eliminate Parliament.

The colonists were struggling not only against the armies of a great nation, but against the settled opinions of mankind; for the world did not then believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely entrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves.

Building a democracy was not that difficult because we had a tradition of tribal consultations.

The Americans are the first people whom heaven has favored with an opportunity of deliberating upon and choosing forms of government under which they should live.

The desire for a democratic political system does not by itself create the capacity for establishing one.

The framers of the American Constitution were far from wishing or intending to found a democracy in the strict sense of the word, though, as was inevitable, every expansion of the scheme of government they elaborated has been in a democratical direction. But this has been generally the slow result of growth, and not the sudden innovation of theory…

One of the cornerstones of our democracy is the peaceful transition of power.

In a democracy, nothing is more sacred than the mandate given by the people.