Karl Popper Quotes

We're not a democracy.

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

The ultimate failures of dictatorship cost humanity far more than the temporary failures of democracy.

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.

Which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?

A country can live under a monarchy or a republic, with a parliamentary or a presidential system, under communism or fascism. But it cannot live in anarchy.

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

It is important to remember there still exist other forms of government in the world today, and that dozens of foreign countries still long for a democracy such as ours to be imposed on them..

There's not a system better than another. There are some people better than others. I'm not anti-democracy, but there's no real system yet that has proven itself to be the right one.

Democracy is the opposite of totalitarianism, communism, fascism, or mobocracy.

The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Asia's governments come in two broad varieties: young, fragile democracies - and older, fragile authoritarian regimes.

The best Governments of the World have bin composed of Monarchy, Aristocracy, and Democracy.

Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.

Authoritarianism provides a kind of negative stability. Democracy creates space to do a lot of things, sometimes bad things, dangerous things.

One of the distinctions between democracy and other forms of government is that while democracy is messy on the surface, other forms of government are messy underneath.

Whatever faults modern democracies may have committed ..., the faults chargeable on monarchs and oligarchies have been less pardonable and more harmful to the peace and progress of mankind.

Democracy doesn't mean electing a dictator every five years.

Two great parties are forming in all nations. For one there is a right of government to be exercised by one or several persons over the mass of the people .... This is opposed by the new system which admits no right of government except that arising from the free consent of those who submit to it.

Institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both.

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.

I have long been convinced that institutions purely democratic must, sooner or later, destroy liberty, or civilization, or both….

People mistake majoritarianism for democracy.

Where annual elections end, there tyranny begins..

Iraq is better without Saddam Hussein than with Saddam Hussein. Without a doubt.