It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

You cannot possibly have a broader basis for any government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

The tragedy of modern democracies is that they have not yet succeeded in effecting democracy.

One voice is tiny, and alone it cannot be heard above the din of politics as usual. The peoples voice, when it cries as one, is a great roar.

Remember one thing about democracy. We can have anything we want and at the same time, we always end up with exactly what we deserve.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.

No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.

The masses are the material of democracy, but its form-that is to say, the laws which express the general reason, justice, and utility-can only be rightly shaped by wisdom, which is by no means a universal property.

Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.