Elbridge Gerry Quotes

The people as a body cannot deliberate. Nevertheless, they will feel an irresistible impulse to act, and their resolutions will be dictated to them by their demagogues... and the violent men, who are the most forward to gratify those passions, will be their favorites. What is called the government of the people is in fact too often the arbitrary power of such men. Here, then, we have the faithful portrait of democracy.

A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.

But the forces of evil have not abdicated. The malevolent ghosts of hatred are resurgent with a fury and a boldness that are as astounding as they are nauseating: ethnic conflicts, religious riots, anti-Semitic incidents here, there, and everywhere. What is wrong with these morally degenerate people that they abuse their freedom, so recently won?

It is one of the evils of democratical governments, that the people, not always seeing and frequently misled, must often feel before they can act.

Some people show evil as a great racehorse shows breeding. They have the dignity of a hard chancre.

While there were many factors in the 2016 election, from false news to voter suppression and Russian hacking, the question is why so many people responded to Donald Trump's demagoguery.

The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.

What havoc, said I to myself, would these manners make in America! Our governors, our judges, our senators or representatives, and even our ministers, would be appointed by harlots, for money; and their judgments, decrees, and decisions, be sold to repay themselves, or, perhaps, to procure the smiles of profligate females.

Democracy is susceptible to being led astray by having scapegoats paraded in front of the electorate.

If evils increase, the devotion of the People of God should also increase.

The Bush Administration, and particularly Bush's chief political strategist and Deputy Chief of Staff, Karl Rove, have been expert in both galvanizing and mobilizing the fears and resentments of people. A good part of their politics consists of being against others who are defined in stereotypical terms. These others don't, in actual reality, exist. The so-called Democratic elitists, for example, are a stereotype who they can hate. Anyone who watches Fox News or listens to Rush Limbaugh knows that this hatred of the other is at the core of their politics.

And so evil flourishes and spreads because decent people don't want to make a fuss.

Playing to resentment and using a lot of, you know, grand abstract phrases like make America great again is - it just doesn't have the answer. It's simply a way to whip up emotion and then leave people more bitter than you found them.

A calculated, malignant, devastating evil has arisen in our world, ... Civilization cannot ignore the wrongs that have been done. America will not tolerate their being repeated. Justice has a new mission, a new calling against an old evil.

He asks how the evil is to be remedied. I tell him that there seems to be little chance for avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy; that the only ground of hope must be the morals of the people, but that these are, I fear, too corrupt.

As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.

The common vice of democracy is disregard for morality.

The problem was you had to keep choosing between one evil or another, and no matter what you chose, they sliced a little more off you, until there was nothing left. At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves.

Washington's Corruption and Mendacity Is What Makes America 'Exceptional'

Power in the hands of the reformer is no less potentially corrupting than in the hands of the oppressor.

Big institutions in this imperial state, in this evil US empire, prepare their politicians to become criminals.

Republics, one after another . . . have perished from a want of intelligence and virtue in the masses of the people. . . .

That's why they (the Bush administration) had to make up that story about weapons of mass destruction. Because that was the only thing that would sell to the American people, and that wasn't true.

To enlist the support of the people and of parliament, you only have to propose a profitable villainy.

If power corrupts, weakness in the seat of power, with its constant necessity of deals and bribes and compromising arrangements,corrupts even more.