DemosKratia

Democracy has been repeatedly praised as the best form of government ever to be discovered by mankind, yet there have been obvious draw backs of the system that has been noticed by many. Some find the idea of democracy to be so perfect that they also want to take it upon themselves to spread this political style of governance to countries across the world that still haven't adopted it. Immanuel Kant predicted that liberal democracies would increase in number and with their increase the armed conflict among them would reduce. While this has proven to be true however, liberal democracies are are just as likely as non-democratic countries to get into armed conflicts with non-democracies! 

What I present here are a selection of quotes which sort of bring out this paradox inherent in the idea of democracy

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

- George Bernard Shaw

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.

- Niels Bohr

Democracy means government by discussion, but it is only effective if you can stop people talking.

- Clement Atlee 

The Democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.

― Thomas Jefferson

Gandhi is the other person. I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.

― Vandana Shiva

In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.

― Thucydides

Democracy... while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

― John Adams

Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.

- Aristotle

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

― Isaac Asimov

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

― H.L. Mencken

 High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

― Oscar Wilde

Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.

― Margaret Thatcher

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequaled alike.

- Socrates