Lee Kuan Yew Quotes

The essential objection to democracy is that, with few exceptions, it imposes degrading acts and attitudes upon the men responsible for the welfare and dignity of the state.

On the show, we are not trying to get people to eat their vegetables; we are not trying to get people to become Democrats. We are basically trying to encourage people to get involved with public life so that politics isn't left to the wealthy and privileged.

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.

Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people.

Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.

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 means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

The idea of democracy has been stripped of it moral imperatives and come to denote hollowness and hypocrisy.

Recognition of the principle ‘one man, one vote’ as a constitutional one redeems the promise of self-governance by affirming the essential dignity of every citizen to equal participation in the democratic process.

Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.

We’ve reformed our representative democracy into the past.

The great vice of democracy --- a vice which is exacting a bitter retribution from it at this moment - is that for a generation we have been busy getting ourselves on to the list of beneficiaries and removing ourselves from the list of contributors, as if somewhere there was somebody else's wealth and somebody else's effort on which we could thrive.

As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

We Arabs have always been talking about America and the flaws in its democracy. But it’s high time that we talked about our own illnesses.

A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and vulgar employments.

The function of a parliamentary democracy, under universal suffrage, historically considered, is to expose wealth-privilege to the attacks of the people.

Democracy is ... a form of religion; it is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Our real disease ... is democracy.

An equality of estate will give an equality of power; and an equality of power is a commonwealth, or democracy…

The problem in this world is to avoid concentration of power -- we must have a dispersion of power.

I guess it proves that in America anyone can be President.

To me, democratic socialism means democracy. It means creating a government that represents all of us, not just the wealthiest people in the country.

Everywhere in the world, we're aware that democracy has incredible flaws and that the word has been used, especially in the United States, to wage wars.