David Brock Quotes

Demagoguery is not unknown in American history.

There's never been an era absent of demagogues.

Demagogues are the mob's lackeys.

…a low and dangerous demagogue.

The demagogue ... is a good showman, whether at Nuremberg at a youth conference, or in Georgia at a political barbecue. He knows the tricks of the ham actor, the gestures, the tones of voice that can arouse passions. Always he dresses himself up as the little man come to life, grown to Brobdingnagian stature and become the "Duce" or the "Leader" or, maybe, "Ploughboy Pete.

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.

When applied to politics and taken to its extreme, kitsch is the mask of death. Fascism was all aesthetics. There was no core principle to it. There was no truth to it.

I'm not comparing Bush to Adolf Hitler - because George Bush, for one thing, is not as smart as Adolf Hitler.

Unfortunately in this country we now have a demagogue ... one that is reckless with the truth.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

In politics where immediate success is attained by saying what people can be made to believe, rather than what is demonstrably true, accent is generally placed on the desirable rather than on the possible.

Political demagogues will seek popularity by public speeches full of insult to foreign countries, and yellow journals will seek to increase their circulation by appeals to prejudice against foreigners.

Where you don't have people who have strong intellectual capacity, you get demagoguery.

In the beginning [Hitler] was genial and pleasant. He would have extraordinary willpower and unheard-of influence on people.

To be sure, Kennedy did not discount the importance of words in rallying the nation to meet its foreign and domestic challenges. Winston Churchill's powerful exhortations during World War II set a standard he had long admired. Kennedy was hardly unmindful of how important a great inaugural address could be.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

If you stand on a soapbox and trade rhetoric with a dictator you never win.

I think people involved in politics make good actors. Acting and politics both involve fooling people. People like being fooled by actors. When you get right down to it, they probably like being fooled by politicians even more. A skillful actor will make you think, but a skillful politician will make you never have to think.

All politicians are to some extent salesmen.

The nature of politics is to subtract meaning from language.

Political machines seek to perpetuate themselves by all sorts of tricks. They sidetrack, channelize and emasculate the popular will

Naturally the common people don't want war ... but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.

We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catchwords, devised to flatter rather than instruct.