Herbert Hoover Quotes

Sometimes it's better to have a benign dictator than a dumb democracy, to be honest.

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy no one has his way.

A democracy delegates leadership. It cannot surrender to it.... The genuinely democratic community rightfully views the hero with suspicion and is notoriously ungrateful.

Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy.

Democracy is not a serial autocracy with each new autocrat being selected by a free and fair election.

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.

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

Democracy is when the people keep a government in check.

When the body of the people is possessed of the supreme power, it is called a democracy.

Democracy is a good client.

Democracy is about non-arbitrary decisions. Democracy is about spreading decisions; it is not about destroying processes.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

The principle of democracy is all about delegation of power by the vast majority of citizens through a few chosen representatives chosen on merit and competence.

While democracy in the long run is the most stable form of government, in the short run, it is among the most fragile.

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.

If democracy brings an undemocratic group to power, is that a victory for democracy?

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

Democracy... is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder; and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.

Democracy is only tolerable because no other system is.

A democracy, when put to the strain, grows weak; and it is supplanted by oligarchy [rule by the few].

It depends on the consent of the people to decide whether kings or counsuls or other magistrates are to be established in authority over them, and if there is a legitimate cause, the people can change a kingdom into an aristocracy or an aristocracy into a democracy, and vice versa.