Popular Discontent Quotes

There is an error common to both oligarchies and to democracies: in the latter the demagogues, when the multitude are above the law, are always cutting the city in two by quarrels with the rich, whereas they should always profess to be maintaining their cause; just as in oligarchies the oligarchs should profess to maintain the cause of the people, . .

The Chinese government is quickly losing its ideological legitimacy, maintain its rule with force, but cannot draw strength from the ideology of Marx and Mao.

Governments usually end not with a bang but with a whimper, as the Conservatives learned in the 1990s. Support and authority erodes over time until there is a final collapse of support and pivotal electoral shift.

The … populace is at all times disposed to dislike the existing government, be it what it will: and as the popular party retained the government in its hands for many years, the habitual feeling against all governments happens to turn against them.

What the electorate gives, the electorate can take away

The Gaza leadership is stuck in its rhetoric of revolution and resistance. But the people are fed up with their leadership.

Americans have always evinced some distrust of government, but the current situation has exacerbated this to a degree that may be unprecedented.

During the election of Washington's successor, it became apparent that the country was sharply divided and that the dissatisfaction with Federalist policies was deep and fervent.

The people are way ahead of the Congress. They are way ahead of the administration.

Nothing in reality renders legitimate governments so insecure as extreme ignorance in the people. It is this which yields them an easy prey to seduction, makes them the victims of prejudices and false alarms, and so ferocious withal that their interference in a time of public commotion is more to be dreaded than the eruption of a volcano.

We find—in the case of political affairs—that the most servile submission to privileged classes, and the grossest abuses of power by these, have been the precursors of the wildest ebullitions of popular fury,—of the overthrow indiscriminately of ancient institutions, good and bad.

People are fed up with something when it becomes more and more popular.

People's Fury is above all the furies.

We can actually speak, much like Bernie Sanders did, for an agenda that the American people are actually clamoring for. In an election which is historic in so many ways, including that the traditional candidates are the most untrusted and disliked in our history, and the American people are clamoring for another choice and another voice.

I think that the reality is, is that there's a shift in the mood in the USA that's very anti-Washington.

Bill Clinton sitting on Air Force One getting his hair cut while people around the country cooled their heels and waited for him, became a metaphor for a populist president who had gotten drunk with the perks of his own power and was sort of, you know, not sensitive to what people wanted.

The British people don’t want me anymore.

I think that what's actually happening is the collapse of the Center - the centrist semi-coalitions, mildly social-democrat, mildly conservative, that have been running the countries for years. They are severely declining. You can see it in voting; you can see it also in popular attitudes: contempt for what are called "the élites," the experts, the people in charge.

We believe - most polls indicate - a lack of support, a lack of confidence in the ability of the Congress to work. That is disturbing in terms of our general democracy.

So long as the great majority of the poor in any country are inert and are laboring without any hope in this world, the whole associated life of that community rests on an equivocal foundation. Its moral and social order is tied to an economic system which starves and mutilates the great majority of the population, and under such conditions its religion necessarily becomes a spiritual drug, administered for the purpose of subduing the popular discontent and relieving the popular misery.

Authority has to exist before it can be limited, and it is authority that is in scarce supply in those modernizing countries where government is at the mercy of alienated intellectuals, rambunctious colonels, and rioting students.

Trump has more understanding and insight than his opponents realize. For a man such as Trump to risk acquiring so many powerful enemies and to risk his wealth and reputation, he had to have known that the people's dissatisfaction with the ruling establishment meant he could be elected president.

He that goeth about to persuade a multitude, that they are not so well governed as they ought to be, never wants attentive and favourable hearers.

The clash between the aspirations of the people for a better life and the insistence of their rulers on building a powerful state, regardless of human sacrifice, runs through the whole of Russian history