What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If read more

What the public does is not to express its opinions but to align itself for or against a proposal. If that theory is accepted, we must abandon the notion that democratic government can be the direct expression of the will of the people. We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilizations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern. We must say that the popular will does not direct continuously but that it intervenes occasionally.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned how to walk forward.

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.

I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.

It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As read more

It is maintained that a society is free only when dissenting minorities have room to throw their weight around. As a matter of fact, a dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.

This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. read more

This I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.

It is a dangerous and idle dream to think that the state can become rule by philosophers turned kings or read more

It is a dangerous and idle dream to think that the state can become rule by philosophers turned kings or scientists turned commissars. For if philosophers become kings or scientists commissars, they become politicians, and the powers given to the state are powers given to men who are rulers of states, men subject to all the limitations and temptations of their dangerous craft. Unless this is borne in mind, there will be a dangerous optimistic tendency to sweep aside doubts and fears as irrelevant, since, in the state that the projectors have in mind, power will be exercised by men of a wisdom and degree of moral virtue that we have not yet seen. It won't. It will be exercised by men who will be men first and rulers next and scientists and saints long after.

Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

Demagogue: one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from
ambush. It will be a slow extinction from read more

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from
ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference,and
undernourishment.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.

Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.