William E. Simon Quotes

Government exists to protect the interests of the powerful from the will of the people.

I believe that the will of the people is resolved by a strong leadership. Even in a democratic society, events depend on a strong leadership with a strong power of persuasion, and not on the opinion of the masses.

Democracy means government by the uneducated, while aristocracy means government by the badly educated.

The American polity is infected with a serious imbalance of power between elites and masses, a power which is the principal threat to our democracy.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

In a democracy (the most natural form of government) everyone submits to the control of authority over his actions, but not over his judgment and reason;

Government is everywhere to a great extent controlled by powerful minorities, with an interest distinct from that of the mass of the people.

The elite interests must not crowd out the interests of the citizens.

Rather than living in a democracy, we are living in a benevolent oligarchy.

A government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices and ambitions of their leaders, is a democracy.

The real strength of the democratic theory in opposition to the fascist or communist is that the fascist frankly states that certain people will tell other people what they shall do to be happy, and those other people have little or nothing to say about it. In theory the communists were to do everything in common, in practice a small group there also tells other people what they shall do to achieve their objectives. So far more nearly than any other form of government, the democratic form has allowed people to shape their own government

The power should be in individual democracies in individual communities. It shouldn't be an oligarchy or some small group of elite. Power should be with the people and not with some politician or some heir to the throne or some madman.

Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government.

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

My government will respect the will of the people.

People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich.

Let the people think they govern and they will be governed.

It's the tyranny of an oligarchy that I'm concerned about.

Democracy doesn't recognize east or west; democracy is simply people's will. Therefore, I do not acknowledge that there are various models of democracy; there is just democracy itself.

Democracy may mean something more than a theoretically absolute popular government, but it assuredly cannot mean anything less.

You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.

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.

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.

The will of the people makes governments legitimate.