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Democracy   Listen
noun
Democracy  n.  (pl. democracies)  
1.
Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained and directly exercised by the people.
2.
Government by popular representation; a form of government in which the supreme power is retained by the people, but is indirectly exercised through a system of representation and delegated authority periodically renewed; a constitutional representative government; a republic.
3.
Collectively, the people, regarded as the source of government.
4.
The principles and policy of the Democratic party, so called. (U.S.)






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Democracy" Quotes from Famous Books



... men and the middle classes lived in the lower part of the city. Social lines were not, however, so sharply drawn here as in cities like Richmond or Charleston. Middle Georgia was perhaps the most democratic section of the South. It was a democracy, it is true, working within the limitations of slavery,* and greatly tempered with the feudal ideas of the older States, but it was a life which gave room for the development of well-marked individual types. There were many Georgia "Crackers" in the surrounding ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... I think a society which permits things to go on which I can prove go on in our federal prisons had better stop and take a fresh look at itself. To stand for that and then talk of democracy and idealism—oh, it shows no mentality, for ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell

... suppression of religious communities, inheritance taxes—in short, whatever has a tendency to pulverize completely the ancient order of society, fills me with a great joy. On the other hand, insofar as liberalism is constructive, as it has been for example in its advocacy of universal suffrage, in its democracy, and in its system of parliamentary government, I consider it ridiculous and ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... must look, to persons in old countries, like a hard and discouraging feature of democracy. I regard it, however, as only a temporary difficulty. Many institutions among us are in a transition state. Gradually the whole subject of the relations of labor and the industrial callings will ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe

... make the choice of a pastor altogether popular. It was the people, considered as a congregation, who ought to appoint the teacher by whom they were to be edified. So far, the party of seceders come forward as martyrs to their democratic principles. And they drew a colourable sanction to their democracy from the great names of Calvin, Zuinglius, and John Knox. Unhappily for them, Sir William Hamilton has shown, by quotations the most express and absolute from these great authorities, that no such democratic appeal as the Non-intrusionists have presumed, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... the trenches how to use the gas mask and how to go without food; how to shoulder arms and how to march. But the schools all along the line did help to give them ideals, did train them in team-play; did instil into them the principles of democracy and the love of country, so that when the need came they arose as one man to repel the foe. And the study of arithmetic, geography, and grammar; of chemistry, physics, and medicine; of Latin, Greek, and history has, in ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... if the peers have ceased to be magnificoes, may it not also happen that the Sovereign may cease to be a Doge? It is not impossible that the political movements of our time, which seem on the surface to have a tendency to democracy, may have in ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... live here is more than I can comprehend. It will be only by overturning the powers that education and equal chances ever can come to the rank and file. The hope of the world is indeed in our republic; so let us work to make it a genuine democracy, where every citizen—woman as well as man—shall be crowned with the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... have been a servant himself, and was one to the best of his ability; but he could not understand self-organization from below. Yet upon the existence of that power depends the whole business of the Revolution. Its strength, then, (and principal advantage), lies in the fact that it makes democracy possible at critical moments, even ...
— On Something • H. Belloc

... Administration. End of the Bayonet Regime. Garfield's Nomination. And Election. And Assassination. The Guiteau Trial. Civil Service Reform. Under Grant. Under Hayes. Need of it. Credit Mobilier Scandal. The Pendleton Act Passed. Its Nature and Operation. Recovery of Power by the Democracy. Election of Cleveland. The Civil Service. Presidential Succession Act of 1886. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... the books and symbols of the faith of Moses."[2134] But, of all these various juggling machines, the worst is the Catholic, the most hostile to nature due to the celibacy of its priesthood, the most opposed to reason in the absurdity of its dogmas, the most opposed to democracy, since its powers are delegated from above downwards, the best protected from civil authority because its head is outside of France.[2135] Accordingly, we must be most furious against it; even after Thermidor,[2136] we will keep up constant persecution, great and small; up to the Consulate, we will ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... as has been argued by more than one honourable member in this debate, that there is a contest going on in the world, between the spirit of unlimited monarchy, and the spirit of unlimited democracy. Between these two spirits, it may be said that strife is either openly in action or covertly at work, throughout the greater portion of Europe. It is true, as has also been argued, that in no former period in history is there so close a resemblance to the present, as in that ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... heard that you ask'd for something to prove this puzzle the New World, And to define America, her athletic Democracy, Therefore I send you my poems that you behold in them what ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... though their principles by no means correspond to those of English Liberals and Conservatives. The main factor which led up to these divisions was class dislike, embittered by the remembrance that both plutocracy and democracy started in life on an equal footing. The diggings caused a general shaking up of the social bag, and the people who came out uppermost were mostly those who had been lowest before. In matters political they grabbed the public lands wholesale; ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny

... and hated the peerage. Each endeavoured to lessen the other. What was thus lost by each was proportionate profit to the people. Those two blind powers, monarchy and oligarchy, could not see that they were working for the benefit of a third, which was democracy. What a delight it was to the crown, in the last century, to be able to hang a peer, ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... common democratic values, and we're applying them as a cornerstone of a comprehensive strategy for peace with freedom. In London last year, I announced the commitment of the United States to developing the infrastructure of democracy throughout the world. We intend to pursue this democratic initiative vigorously. The future belongs not to governments and ideologies which oppress their peoples, but to democratic systems of self-government which encourage individual ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Ronald Reagan • Ronald Reagan

... ourselves. In Crotona and many other Greek cities in Italy Pythagoreans became a predominant aristocracy, who, having learned obedience under their master, applied what they had learned in an anti-democratic policy of government. This lasted for some thirty years, but ultimately democracy gained the day, and Pythagoreanism as a political ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall

... knew that a great nation had cast aside the bonds of sloth and luxury, and was girding itself to join in the fight for the free democracy of all mankind. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... risk of having their motives misunderstood, from associating together for the purpose of bringing about this result. I have asked, Sir, what risks do we run if we reject this measure? We run the risk of being swallowed up by the spirit of universal democracy that prevails in the United States. Their usual and ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin

... leading incidents of the busy and intriguing reign of Charles II. are successively introduced in the following order. The city of London is discovered occupied by the republicans and fanatics, depicted under the allegorical personages Democracy and Zeal. General Monk, as Archon, charms the factions to sleep, and the Restoration is emblematized by the arrival of Charles, and the Duke of York, under the names of Albion and Albanius. The second act opens with a council of the fiends, where ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... stricter construction of the Constitution and greater respect for the rights of the States than Adams believed in. So, notwithstanding Jackson's tariff views, the mass of the people held him a better representative of Jeffersonian Democracy than his rival. ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown

... Voltairian—he renounced horsemanship, and Liberalism. Although he was a simple deputy, he had a twinge of democracy now and then; but after he was invested with the peerage, he felt sure from that moment that the human species had no more progress ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... millennium seemed hardly worth purchasing at so detestable a cost. He stood altogether too close to the terrible drama, in its later stages, to distinguish the true import or progression of it. Too close to understand that, however blood-stained its cradle, the goodly child Democracy was veritably, here and now, in the act of being born among men. Rather did he question whether his own fat little neck was not in lively danger of being severed; and his own head—so full of ingenious thoughts and lively ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet

... diagnostician. I mean to tell you that I am not suffering from the microbe of socialism. I mean to tell you that it is you who are suffering from the emasculating ravages of that same microbe. As for me, I am an inveterate opponent of socialism just as I am an inveterate opponent of your own mongrel democracy that is nothing else than pseudo- socialism masquerading under a garb of words that will not stand the ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London

... imprisonment. He was confined at Ham. There his mind seemed to take refuge within itself and to mature: he wrote and published some books, instinct, notwithstanding a certain ignorance of France and of the age, with democracy and with progress: "The Extinction of Pauperism," "An Analysis of the Sugar Question," "Napoleonic Ideas," in which he made the Emperor a "humanitarian." In a treatise entitled "Historical Fragments," he wrote thus: "I am a ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... self-elective: but choosing to receive a modification of these powers from the Stadtholder, rather than from the people, they threw themselves into his scale. The moderate Aristocrats would have consented to a temperate mixture of democracy, and particularly, that the Regents should be elected by the people. They were the declared enemies of the Stadtholder, and acted in concert with the Democrats, forming with them what was called the Patriots. It is the opinion of dispassionate people on the spot, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... perhaps it's the decent thing to do? Oh, well; don't say anything about it. I haven't made up my mind—this is an awful place!" he said, with a shiver, looking across at Shantytown and remembering what was hidden under the glamor of the moon. "The smell of it! Democracy is well enough, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland

... position to take care of themselves, no doubt they will make short work of a good deal of official regulation that is now of life-and-death necessity to us; but under existing circumstances, I repeat, almost any sort of attention that democracy will stand is better than neglect. Attention and activity lead to mistakes as well as to successes; but a life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. The one lesson that comes out ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... said that many an army has prospered under a bad commander, but no army has ever prospered under a 'debating society;' that many-headed monster is then fatal. Despotism grows in the first societies, just as democracy grows in more modern societies; it is the government answering the primary need, and congenial to the whole spirit of the time. But despotism is unfavourable to the principle of variability, as all history shows. It tends to keep ...
— Physics and Politics, or, Thoughts on the application of the principles of "natural selection" and "inheritance" to political society • Walter Bagehot

... savages, or, if he is of the intellectual kind, he will talk about our confusing subtleties and contradictions. But we are neither savages nor confusing. We have simply a skin less than you.... We are a very young people, a real and genuine Democracy, and we care for quite simple things, women, food, sleep, money, quite simply and without restraint. We show our eagerness, our disgust, our disappointment, our amusement simply as the mood moves us. In Moscow ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole

... for military service and personal popularity he was elected senator, from what was then known as the Western District, in 1814, and again in 1823. During this period he became the recognized leader of the Otsego Democracy. Stranahan was a poor man, and his official service was rendered at the sacrifice of his law practice. When Cooperstown celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of our national independence, Col. Stranahan, because of his debts, was a prisoner in the county ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... the Pelasgic relations to the Greeks. The poet makes Pelasgos the king of Argos, and represents him as ruling over the largest part of Greece. His subjects he calls Greeks, and they vote in public assembly by holding up their hands, so distinguishing them from the Dorians, among whom no such democracy prevailed.[211] He protects the suppliant women against their Egyptian persecutors, who claimed them as fugitives from slavery. The character assigned by Aeschylus to this representative of the Pelasgian ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke

... catechism was published, we have had the war to end war and to make the world safe for democracy—a fateful and mournful war in which millions of lives were lost and other millions wrecked with the result of ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... of the United States Treasury, in his reply to Senator McLaurin in the New York Herald, says truthfully: "In Wilmington, N. C., albeit the Executive as a leader of his party had backed down and surrendered everything as a peace offering, and the democracy, if that is what they call themselves, had carried the day, still the main thoroughfares of that city were choked with armed men. They destroyed personal property, they burned houses, they wantonly took more than a dozen lives, they ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... rolled hither and thither for two centuries, and was illustrated by the valour and genius of Europe, by characters and incidents of imposing grandeur, sublime devotion, or moving pity. So in the war of the French Revolution the dying principle of Monarchism was arrayed against the principle of Democracy, and the tragic heroism with which the combatants represented these principles, whether Austria, Russia, Spain, England, Germany, or France, makes that war one of the most precious ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... and he, Private Roscoe Bent, who would take delight in canning the Kaiser, who would give his young life if need be, to make the world free for democracy, trembled like a leaf. ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh

... Protection in the campaign of 1856. His taking courage from so insignificant a fact as any of these gentlemen declaring for any serviceable doctrine in a campaign shows Mr. Ormsby to be by no means intimately acquainted with Massachusetts Democracy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... What, again, can be finer in conception than that voice from the people heard suddenly in the House of Lords, in solemn arraignment of the pleasures and privileges of its splendid occupants? The horrible laughter, stamped for ever "by order of the king" upon the face of this strange spokesman of democracy, adds yet another feature of justice to the scene; in all time, travesty has been the argument of oppression; and, in all time, the oppressed might have made this answer: "If I am vile, is it not your system that has made me so?" This ghastly laughter gives ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... England. To the journalist Beechwood Hall stood on its hill, a sign and symbol of the spacious leisure of the eighteenth century and the long tradition that it represented, one that had not even begun to drop into decadence till 1850, a tradition that still existed, despite the fact that democracy was finding its way into the agricultural parts of England. The journalist was impressed, perhaps unduly impressed, by the noble hall and the quiet passages that seemed to preserve a memory of the many generations that had ...
— The Lake • George Moore

... they waited for the remainder of the huge squadron to join them. The hum of the many motors made merry music in the ears of the two young Yankee aviators. That droning sound seemed to be spelling the downfall of autocracy, and the rule of real democracy ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach

... time in Korean history that democracy made its power felt in the government was at the time Russia brought to Korea a large number of army officers to drill the Korean troops. When this question was brought up in the Independence Club debate, and the scheme was thoroughly discussed pro and con by those who took part in the ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie

... book of the great doctor, all may read: "The farther the government recedes from the common weal, the more unjust is it. It recedes farther from the common weal in an oligarchy, in which the welfare of a few is sought, than in a democracy, whose object is the good of the many. . . . But farther still does it recede from the common weal in a tyrannous government, by which the good of ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... for that end. As a result, the furthering of war (if it be not on too large a scale) is no longer confined to the honour- and-glory kind of old Tories, who if they meant anything at all by it meant that a Tory war would be a good occasion for damping down democracy; we have changed all that, and now it is quite another kind of politician that is wont to urge us on to "patriotism" as 'tis called. The leaders of the Progressive Liberals, as they would call themselves, long-headed persons who know well enough ...
— Signs of Change • William Morris

... encroachment, and to maintain them with firmness." "The constitution of this country," he presently added, "is its glory; but in what a nice adjustment does its excellence consist! Equally free from the distractions of democracy and the tyranny of monarchy, its happiness is to be found in its mixture of parts. It was this mixed government which the prudence of our ancestors devised, and which it will be our wisdom to support. ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... gain than any other country in Europe by reverting to those sound principles of democracy which formed her erstwhile glory. We do not forget what we owe her, nor the noble spirit which pervades some of her historic deeds. But noblesse oblige, and all the more binding is her duty to ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... and all that it brought up, the thought of all the hands through which it had passed—hands of workmen, the hands of little children, the hands of beggars, even; hard hands and gnarled hands and honest hands, the hands of mine own people—it seemed to me to have been made precious by the patina of democracy, and I thought that nothing could have been more beautiful and significant than that Lincoln's noble head should have been engraved on our smallest coin, a token of our universal daily need in hands that humbly break the bread their toil has earned. ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... neither a Doctrinaire nor a Republican,—and yet, perhaps, he was a little of both. He was one who thought that the tendency of all European States is towards Democracy; but he by no means looked upon Democracy as a panacea for all legislative evils. He thought that, while a writer should be in advance of his time, a statesman should content himself with marching by ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... parties in our country without an iota of difference between them. Every four years they present candidates and give us a choice. What difference does it make which one of the two we choose if they both stand for the same thing? This is democracy?" ...
— Combat • Dallas McCord Reynolds

... different—in fact, different enough to make a conundrum of the question—what is the difference between a shoemaker and a poet? One makes the shoes and the other shakes the muse—all the difference in the world. Still, I don't see how we can exclude the poets. It is the very democracy of this club that gives it life. We take in everybody—peer, poet, or what not. To say that this man shall not enter because he is this or that or the other thing would result in our ultimately becoming a class ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs

... certain, however, that the recantation of Mirabeau, from avowed democracy to aristocracy and royalty, through the medium of enriching himself by a 'salva regina', made his friends prepare for him that just retribution, which ended in a 'de profundis'. At a period when all his vices were called to aid one virtuous ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... books, articles, and letters with his own hand until the last few years, when he occasionally had assistance with his correspondence; but his last two books, "Social Environment" and "The Revolt of Democracy," written when he was 90 years of age, were penned by himself, and the MSS. are perfectly legible ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... as the completion of a design extending over a period of twenty-six years, Whitman had undertaken an extensive revision of what he termed his bible of democracy. There are three hundred and eighteen poems. This is the edition abandoned by the publishers because threatened with prosecution by ...
— Walt Whitman Yesterday and Today • Henry Eduard Legler

... each rally. Never was such political excitement in that county. There was an enclosed stage erected and a piano placed upon it and each night speeches were made (and ringing ones too) and I think all the sleepy mossbacks were wide awake at last and realized that their kind of Democracy was tottering and waiting for the last blow. When Benjamin Harrison was elected the twenty-third president of these United States, San Bernardino county had demonstrations never equaled before or since. Every man, woman and child participated. Men from miles around were in the procession, ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson

... old error of Mr. Carlyle's crops up among his well-remembered truths. He quotes from Machiavelli—evidently agreeing himself with the sentiment, though he refrained from asking the assent of his audience to it—the statement that the history of Rome showed that a democracy could not permanently exist without the occasional intervention of a Dictator. It is possible that if Machiavelli had had the experience of the centuries which have elapsed since his day, he would have ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle

... nurse none but well-paid artisans?" she asked him, mocking. "And I didn't say 'money' or 'comfort,' did I? but 'happiness.' As for my 'democracy,' you are not perhaps ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... have had a place in the propyla, or served to decorate the halls of Versailles in the days of Napoleon, has here a place beneath the portrait of Jefferson. This humble tribute the old hostess says she pays to democracy. And at each end of the hall are double alcoves, over the arches of which are great spread eagles, holding in their beaks the points of massive maroon-colored drapery that falls over the sides, forming brilliant depressions. ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams

... his worship, he will even consent that the statue of Liberty be sometimes veiled, when there is a necessity for it. That France should be great and glorious, that she should not cease to be democratic, and to advance toward a democracy more and more equitable and favorable to all,—such were the aspirations and the programme of Beranger. He goes so far as to say that in his childhood he had an aversion, almost a hatred, for Voltaire, on account ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various

... generality of critics likewise. I really don't want to convince anybody. It is quite in opposition to my whole nature. I don't intend my books for the generality of readers. I count it a mistake of our mistaken democracy, that every man who can read print is allowed to believe that he can read all that is printed. I count it a misfortune that serious books are exposed in the public market, like slaves exposed naked for sale. But there we are, since we live in an age ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... variety of foods unparalleled in the world's history, and including many condiments and preserved preparations novel to the human economy. And Miriam did the cooking. Mr. Polly's system, like a confused and ill-governed democracy, had been brought to a state of perpetual clamour and disorder, demanding now evil and unsuitable internal satisfactions, such as pickles and vinegar and the crackling on pork, and now vindictive external expression, war and bloodshed ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... repeat itself, the old story of the many led by the few. Always it had come, autocracy, the too great power of one man; then anarchy, the overthrow of that power by the angry mob. Out of that anarchy the gradual restoration of order by the people themselves, into democracy. And then in time again, by that steady gravitation of the strong up and the weak down, some one man who emerged from the mass and crowned himself, or was crowned. And there was autocracy again, ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... though neither of the guests suspected it. Shelby was diverted by Mrs. Van Dam's unimagined vivacity; while his wife had no immediate room for any impression save satisfaction that this autocrat, who held that punctuality should be the politeness of democracy no less than princes, had been caught napping. It was clear that she meant to bury the hatchet, and Cora, with her own point carried, saw no reason why she should not add a shovelful of symbolic earth herself. ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther

... not talk too much of Puritans and Cavaliers. The soldiers of the Union are not Puritans, neither are the planters Cavaliers, But the present civil war is a vast episode in the same irrepressible conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy; and the heirs of the Cavalier in England sympathize with your enemies, the heirs of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various

... to whom no world interest is alien, whose voice reaches afar, whose spirit travels across seas and mountain ranges to most distant continents and islands—and with America goes far and wide what America in the grandest ideal represents—democracy and liberty, a government of the people, by the people, for the people. This is Americanism more than American territory, or American shipping, or American soldiery. Where this grandest ideal of American life is not held supreme America has not reached, where ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... him again, in France. Our own country had gotten into the fight by that time, and I was caught in the first draft. I had heard now and then from Randolph. He had worked for nearly three years with the Ambulance Corps, and was now fighting for democracy with his fellows. ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey

... conviction: "This is what comes of so much science: it always tends to make a man common in his social tastes. You need not smile at me in that pitying way, for it is true: it destroys aristocratic feeling; and there is more need of aristocratic feeling in a democracy than anywhere else: because it is the only thing that can be aristocratic. That is what science has done for Dent! And this girl I—the public school has tried to make her uncommon, and the Girl's College has ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen

... subject of their discourse, "seeing you are preparing yourself to enter upon the government of our Republic, where the people are master, without doubt you have reflected on the nature of this State, and know what a democracy is?" "You ought to believe I do." "And do you think it possible," said Socrates, "to know what a democracy or popular State is without knowing what the people is?" "I do not think I can." "And what is the people?" said Socrates. "Under that name," answered Euthydemus, "I ...
— The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates • Xenophon

... said, "I come from Versailles * * * It only remains for us to choose our colours. Quelle couleur voulez vous? Green, the colour of hope; or the blue of Cincinnati, the colour of American liberty and democracy." ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... troublesome. The conduct of these, proved that it was natural for the strong to tyrannize over the weak. I have often thought that our assemblage of prisoners, resembled very much the Grecian and Roman democracies, which were far, very far, beneath the just, rational, and wisely guarded democracy of our dear America, for whose existence and honor we are all still heartily disposed to risk our lives, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse

... second generation, dad," the boy went on, at length, "and the second generation has an ideal of its own, and that ideal is Success. It took us these forty years to come to understand the spirit of America. You were a dreamer who loved America. I'm an American. We've translated democracy and brotherhood and equality into enterprise and opportunity and success—and that's getting Americanised. Now, father," he sought refuge in the tone of every-day things, "you'll get used to it—won't you? I don't expect you to feel very good about it, but ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell

... to rule." Your diplomacy is as complicated as ours, and it is the most complicated on earth, for all things grow in complexity as they develop toward a higher condition. What fitness is there in these people? Well, it is not democracy merely; it is a representative democracy. Our people do not vote in mass for anything; they pick out captains of thought, they pick out the men that do know, and they send them to the Legislature to think for them, and then ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... test to have come, and that the final success or failure of the Federal Constitution was staked on the result. The people of the United States have been willing to accept that issue. We have been ready to test the doctrines of Democracy by the practicability of maintaining the Union, and to demonstrate, that, if need be, the General Government may receive at the hands of the people greater strength without endangering either their liberties or the order ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... abolishing the authority which prescribes restraints. Just as the fundamental change inaugurated by the Reformation, was not a superseding of one creed by another, but an ignoring of the arbiter who before dictated creeds—just as the fundamental change which Democracy long ago commenced, was not from this particular law to that, but from the despotism of one to the freedom of all; so, the parallel change yet to be wrought out in this supplementary government of which we are treating, is not the replacing of absurd usages by sensible ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... great a shifting of the balance of power, as did later the rise of the rich merchants, industrials, and nabobs in England. As the power of the nobles decreased, the central power or the power of the kings increased; increased indeed, and lasted, down to the greatest crusade of all, when democracy organized itself, and marched to the redemption of the rights of man as man, without regard to ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... Republican its foundation must be the sovereignty of the people, the division of powers, civil freedom, the proscription of slavery, the abolition of monarchy and of privileges." ... "Unlimited freedom, absolute democracy, are the rocks upon which Republican hopes have been destroyed. Look at the old republics, the modern republics, and the republics now in process of formation; almost all have aimed to establish themselves as absolutely democratic, and almost ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... sons of the nobility in the Mother Land, men of birth and breeding and social advantage have always been in the ranks. But once in the force there were no social distinctions sought or recognized. Genuine manhood was the only hall-mark allowed as a standard. The fine democracy of Robert Burns,— ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth

... but Rosamund was amused by democracy at close quarters, showing its naked love of liberty. Her strong humanity rose to the occasion, and she gave herself with a smiling willingness to the streets, in which men, women, children and animals, with lungs of leather, sent forth their ultimate music. Nevertheless, ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... really marked the beginning of his career as a national leader. Despite the accident which had made him the Democracy's nominal leader, he demonstrated that he was the ablest of the radicals into whose hands it had fallen, and his nominal chieftainship became a real one. It was evident from the beginning that he would be renominated in 1900. When the Spanish war broke out he offered his services and became Colonel ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... mapped-out Continent we call the Past. For just think, let us say, of the change implied in the multiplication through machinery of a stereotyped form, as against the production of an individual object by individual hands. Why, such a change means democracy far more than any other change in laws and franchises; and it means, among other things, that any art sprung really from the present will have to be of the nature, not of the painting or sculpture of old days, of the architecture which made each single cathedral an individual ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... charge of the measure. After being altered and pruned by both Houses the bill was passed, in spite of Lord Eldon, 'with tears and doleful predictions,' urging the peers 'to resist this first turn of the helm towards the whirlpool of democracy.' Grampound ceased to exist as a Parliamentary borough, and the county of York gained two members. Although Lord John supported the amended bill—on the principle that half a loaf is better than no bread—he ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid

... contested elections; of those professionally pursuing the career of arms in the naval or land service; and then, collating all this activity with the very limited extent of our peerage taken even with their families, not the very bigotry of democracy will deny that the characteristic energy of our nation is faithfully reflected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... so," agreed Amanda, while she mentally appraised the girl before her and thought, "Isabel Souders, a little more democracy wouldn't be ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... and there is only one way to get a democracy on its feet in the matter of its individual, its social, its municipal, its State, its National conduct, and that is by keeping the public informed about what is going on. There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice which ...
— An Adventure With A Genius • Alleyne Ireland

... expected mere excitement, violent fluctuations of opinion, a confused irresponsibility, and possibly mischievous and disastrous interventions. It is no good hiding an open secret. We judged America by the peace headline. It is time we began to offer our apologies to America and democracy. The result of reading endless various American newspapers and articles, of following the actions of the American Government, of talking to representative Americans, is to realize the existence of a very clear, strong national mentality, a firm, self-controlled, collective ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... struggle a matter of profound interest. Though it cannot be said that the contest is that of revolutionists or even of republicans against a legitimately ruling monarch, yet the real principles involved in the contest are in substance those of absolutism and of democracy. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... "become aristocratic." "Though the founder of Shinshu wore flaxen clothing, Shinshu priests now have glittering costumes. And everyone has heard of the magnificence of the Kyoto Hongwanji" (the great temple at Kyoto, the headquarters of the sect).[11] "Contrary to the principles of religion and democracy," people thought of the priest and the temple "as something beyond their own lives." All this stood ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... destructive, they cannot exist together; for, given liberty, the strong instantly look to it that equality shall perish. And rightly so. Equality is a war cry for fools—a negation of nature, an abortion. The very ants know better. Doubtless you view with considerable distrust the growing spirit of democracy, or what is called by ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts

... political power which gave the right of governing the realm as a perquisite to a few patrician families has been broken down. The compromise which transferred the old privileges of the aristocracy to the middle classes has had to be abandoned. The "advancing tide of democracy" at which men looked through a telescope twenty years ago, wondering at what comparatively remote period it would reach our shores, has already reached us, and the waters are still rising. The superstitions formerly attaching ...
— The Contemporary Review, January 1883 - Vol 43, No. 1 • Various

... is the theory that one man is as good as another; Christianity, he finds, is the virtual sanctification by supernatural authority of democracy. He points out the incompatibility of political democracy, for example, with the determinism to which Mr. Blatchford's logical atheism has brought him. If man is the creature of his heredity and his environment, as Mr. Blatchford ...
— G. K. Chesterton, A Critical Study • Julius West

... won, and the World well lost; oftener than once a hundred thousand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. All kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might ferment there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in cries that reached Heaven, could not ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle

... again companions. Sara's life was full and gay; she had interests in which he had no share; her social world was utterly apart from his; she was of the hill and its traditions, he was of the valley and its people. The democracy of childhood past, there was no common ground on which they might meet. Only one thing Jeffrey had found it impossible to contemplate calmly. Some day Sara would marry—a man who was her equal, who sat at her father's table as a guest. In spite of himself, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... coat buttoned up under his spreading brown beard. The few members of the Provincial Assembly present clustered at once around their President to discuss the news of the war and the last proclamation of the rebel Montero, the miserable Montero, calling in the name of "a justly incensed democracy" upon all the Provincial Assemblies of the Republic to suspend their sittings till his sword had made peace and the will of the people could be consulted. It was practically an invitation to dissolve: an unheard-of audacity of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... too, that Carl got into difficulties with the intrenched powers on the campus. He had what has been referred to as "a passion for justice." Daily the injustice of campus organization grew on him; he saw democracy held high as an ideal—lip-homage only. Student affairs were run by an autocracy which had nothing to justify it except its supporters' claim of "efficiency." He had little love for that word—it is usually bought at too great a cost. That year, as usual, ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker

... confiscates them, and he charges admission. He has banished all except a few of us priests, and has shamefully persecuted our Sisters of Mercy. Oh, the outrages! Mexico is, today, the blackest spot on the map of Christendom." His voice broke. "That is the freedom, the liberty, the democracy, for which they are fighting. That is the new Mexico. And the Federals are not a bit better. This Longorio, for instance, this—wolf—he brings me here, as his prisoner, to solemnize an unholy marriage! He treats me like a dog. Last night I ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach

... stood beside Danton when those tidings were brought to him. He flung up his cap in the air, with a burst of laughter. "So much the better!" he exclaimed; "the closer the preserve, the thicker the game." I had now a complete view of this hero of democracy. His figure was herculean; his countenance, which possibly, in his younger days, had been handsome, was now marked with the lines of every passion and profligacy, but it was still commanding. His costume was one which he had chosen for himself, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... knew that all his property would be confiscated. It was probable that Josephine would also be led to her execution. The guillotine spared neither sex who had incurred the suspicions of enthroned democracy. Both parents forgot themselves, in their anxiety for their children. The execution of Beauharnais would undoubtedly lead to the arrest and execution of Josephine. The property of the condemned was invariably confiscated. There was thus danger that the children would be ...
— Hortense, Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... disappear beneath the expressionless mask of concrete. It was all changed since his father's or his grandfather's day; it was all obvious and cheap, he thought; it was all ugly and naked and undistinguished—yet the tide of the new ideas was still rising. Democracy, relentless, disorderly, and strewn with the wreckage of finer things, had overwhelmed the world of established ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow

... he had grown as perfect a flower of helplessness and indolence, as fine a fruit of maturing civilization, as ever expanded or ripened in Latin lands. He lived, not only a protest in flesh and blood against the tendency of democracy to exclude mere beauty from our system, but a refutation of those Old World observers, who deny to our vulgar and bustling communities the refining and elevating grace of Repose. There was something very curious and original in his character, from which the sentiment of shame was absent, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... business is attacked; that the mutuality of interest between employer and employee will receive ungrudging admission; and, finally, that men of affairs will lend themselves more patriotically to the work of making democracy an efficient instrument for the promotion of human welfare. It cannot be said that they have done so in the past.... As a consequence, many necessary things have been done less perfectly without ...
— The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit • Ralph Waldo Trine

... the direct antithesis to democracy.... Athens! a few thousand citizens who owned many thousand slaves, call that democracy! No! what I am speaking of is modern democracy—the mass. The mass can only appreciate simple and naïve emotions, ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... his receptions—the fashionable classes, who are far more loyal to England for the most part than the English themselves, their fringe, and then the wealthier of the tradespeople. It is proven every day that a democracy is the happiest hunting ground for a man with a title. The very rarity of the distinction makes it more precious to those who value it, and the titled governors of one of our great colonies occupies a position which is vastly higher in public esteem than that of his fellow-noblemen at home. He ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... youthful curiosity, but no lack of loyalty to Colonel Starbottle, that the editor that evening sought this "war-horse of the Democracy," as he was familiarly known, in his invalid chamber at the Palmetto Hotel. He found the hero with a bandaged ear and—perhaps it was fancy suggested by the story of the choking—cheeks more than usually suffused and apoplectic. Nevertheless, he was seated by the table with a mint julep before ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte

... of an adjoining one. Hence it happened that the children of the higher classes were often pitted against those of the lower, each taking their side according to the residence of their friends. So far as I recollect, however, it was unmingled either with feelings of democracy or aristocracy, or, indeed, with malice or ill-will of any kind towards the opposite party. In fact, it was only a rough mode of play. Such contests were, however, maintained with great vigour with stones and sticks ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... found the President's plan acceptable. Mr. Wilson won a great personal triumph, but he did so by surrendering the fundamental principle of the equality of nations. In his eagerness to "make the world safe for democracy" he abandoned international democracy and became the advocate of ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... Hall and the Republican party. Steeped in decades of the most loathsome corruption, Tammany Hall was chosen as the medium by which the Labor party was to be defrauded and effaced. Pretending to be the "champion of the people's rights," and boasting that it stood for democracy against aristocracy, Tammany Hall had long deceived the mass of the people to plunder them. It was a powerful, splendidly-organized body of mercenaries and selfseekers which, by trading on the principles of democracy, had been able to count on the partisan votes of a predominating element of the ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... simple treatment, although astounded that the patient had been under no more radical or systematic cure than travel and exercise. The women especially were amazed that Mainwaring had taken "nothing for it," in their habitual experience of an unfettered pill-and-elixir-consuming democracy. In their knowledge of the thousand "panaceas" that filled the shelves of the general store, this singular abstention of their guest seemed to ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... junkerism. Few of us now realize the significance that will accrue as the years go by to the presence of allied soldiers in Russia during this period of her greatest suffering. The battle for world peace, for democracy, for free representative government, has not yet been fought to a finish ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... the restoration of absolutism, the Czech majority, in spite of a singularly impressive warning given by a leader of the German Liberals, refused a hearing to the Hungarian representatives. The Magyars, repelled by the Assembly, sought and found allies in the democracy of Vienna itself. The popular clubs rang with acclamations for the cause of Hungarian freedom and with invectives against the Czech instruments of tyranny. In the midst of this deepening agitation ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... implementation. It demands unity of effort by government agencies. And its success depends on the unity of the American people in a time of political polarization. Americans can and must enjoy the right of robust debate within a democracy. Yet U.S. foreign policy is doomed to failure—as is any course of action in Iraq—if it is not supported by a broad, sustained consensus. The aim of our report is to move our country toward ...
— The Iraq Study Group Report • United States Institute for Peace

... on, gazing out into the beautiful night of the woods. No one longed as fervently as he did for the end of the term of service. He, who had been wont to grudge every day on which he had done nothing to further the cause of revolution and social-democracy, was forbidden for two long years to allow a word to pass his lips about what lay nearest his heart! Yet he was all the more cautious not to commit any indiscretions that might perhaps entail a prolongation ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... is worthy to be the law of any living composer. These Blue Laws of music are constantly assailed surreptitiously and in detail; and yet they are too little attacked as a whole. But music should be a democracy and not an aristocracy, or, still ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes

... to actual facts, it should be made clear even to young people that a well-ordered constitution under secure monarchical rule is the indispensable condition for the protection and welfare of each individual, both as a citizen and as a worker; that, on the other hand, the doctrines of social democracy are, in point of fact, infeasible; and that, if they were put into practice, the liberty of each individual would be subjected to intolerable restraint, even within the very circle of the home. The ideas of the Socialists are sufficiently defined through their own writings for it to be possible ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... irons, Here as a weanling in bands, As a prey that the stake-net environs, Our life that we looked for stands; And the man-child naked and dear, Democracy, turns on us here Eyes trembling ...
— Songs before Sunrise • Algernon Charles Swinburne

... yielded so willingly to a request for my written views as I do in this instance, when my valued friend, the master journalist, Melville E. Stone, has asked me, on behalf of the Book Committee, to write an introduction for "The Defenders of Democracy." Needless to say, I comply all the more readily in view of the fact that the book in which these words will appear is planned by the ladies of the Militia of Mercy as a means of increasing the Fund the Society is raising for the benefit of the families of "their own men" ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy

... "superior person." On the other hand without freedom of individual development, the organisation of life becomes the death of the soul. Prussia has shown how the psychology of the crowd can be skilfully manipulated for the most sinister ends. It is a happy omen for our democracy that both these complementary movements are combined in the new life of the schools. To both appeals, the appeal of personal freedom, and the appeal of the corporate life, the British child is peculiarly ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various

... is now a member of the French Assembly; but he still finds time to labor for democracy and socialism with his pen. He has commenced the publication in one of the journals of a new romance, called La bonne Aventure. From a few chapters, it is evident that it will possess the enthralling interest of most of his works, and will display ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various

... quotation is justified by its effect on—my life. For me it has another interest. In re-reading it, I note that, right or wrong, it takes exactly the view of the English democracy which I have always taken and which I hold today as strongly as I did forty ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... possible, to attempt a complete "return to Nature" by abolishing all the ways and conventions of civilization. This would be throwing away our social inheritance and returning to barbarism. We must go forward, not backward. Just as the cure for the evils of Democracy is said to be more Democracy; so the cure for the evils of civilization must be more civilization. The equilibrium of Nature having been upset by civilization, science, one of the great products of civilization, must now work out the remedies. Just as the ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk

... that of the other; but whilst the authority of the state rests upon law and its severe administration, the power of the church ought to be grounded only upon conviction, faith, freedom and love, for these are the requirements as well as the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. In a democracy the law must be a most complete defence against the wicked; the Gospel the basis of all improvement. As the principles of the church and of the state differ in this way, so do they also in the mode of their use. This difference was clearly apprehended by Zwingli. We see ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger

... was no idea of innovation, but, as Anderson states in a note, "it should meet Quarterly according to ancient Usage," tradition having by this time become authoritative in such matters. Hints of what the old usages were are given in the observance of St. John's Day[117] as a feast, in the democracy of the order and its manner of voting by a show of hands, in its deference to the oldest Master Mason, its use of badges of office,[118] its ceremony of installation, all in a lodge ...
— The Builders - A Story and Study of Masonry • Joseph Fort Newton

... side the water are afraid lest the multitude of American representatives should overturn the balance of the constitution, and increase too much either the influence of the crown on the one hand, or the force of the democracy on the other. But if the number of American representatives were to be in proportion to the produce of American taxation, the number of people to be managed would increase exactly in proportion to the means of managing ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith

... suicidal course, and yet, in the exclusion of exile, be unable to lend a helping hand. "It is not men of this stamp," they averred, "who desire changes in affairs and revolution: had he not already guaranteed to him by the Democracy a position higher than that of his equals in age, and scarcely if at all inferior to his seniors? How different was the position of his enemies. It had been the fortune of these, though they were known to be the same men they had always been, ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon

... was the most perfect democrat, in the best sense of the word, that I ever knew. It was a democracy which was the logical result of the doctrines of the Old Testament and of the New. It recognized the dignity of the individual soul, without regard to the accident of birth or wealth or power or color ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... of the bricks that have been modelled and cast by any recognisable group of propagandists, working to permeate, or more forcibly to convert, a section of the public under the flags of, say, Fabianism or Social Democracy. The essential thing about Mr Wells is that he is not a Follower, whether of Marx, or Hyndman, or Shaw, or Bebel; he may have learnt from any or all of them, but his theory of social reconstruction is pre-eminently ...
— H. G. Wells • J. D. Beresford

... This entry gives the basic form of government (e.g., republic, constitutional monarchy, federal republic, parliamentary democracy, ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Judge, the host, wasted not a moment in contradicting. "You're mad, Joe," he threw at him with a hand on the shoulder of the man who was still to him that promising youngster, little Joe Burden of The School. "Held back democracy! The war! Quite mad, ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... of democracy incomprehensible after this? Ambitious and continually thwarted, he could not reproach himself. He had once already tried his fortune by inventing a purgative pill, something like Morrison's, and intrusted the business ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac

... White-Plains to Providence, M. de Lafayette, who had exerted himself to hasten their departure, conducted them rapidly along the sound, across a smiling country, covered with villages, in which the evident equality of the population distinctly proved the democracy of the government. From the apparent prosperity of each colony, it was easy to judge of the degree of freedom which its ...
— Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette • Lafayette

... society of distinguished men and women who exist no more, but who touched history with a light hand, and left their mark upon it in a host of memoirs and letters that we read to-day with a starved and home-sick longing in the midst of our sullen welter of democracy. With its silent houses and gardens, its silent streets, its silent vistas of the blue water in the sunshine, this beautiful, sad place was winning my heart and making it ache. Nowhere else in America such charm, such character, such true elegance as here—and nowhere else such ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... in the true sense of the term, who had perished in the case they were discussing. Another and most important point to be remembered in any attempt to discover the real secret of China's prolonged existence as a nation, also points in the direction of democracy and freedom. The highest positions in the state have always been open, through the medium of competitive examinations, to the humblest peasant in the empire. It is solely a question of natural ability coupled with an intellectual training; and of the latter, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles

... Erskyll said. "It's not democratic enough. There should be a direct vote by the people. Well," he grudged, "I suppose it will take a little time for them to learn democracy." This was the first time he had come out and admitted that. "There is to be a Constituent Convention in five years, to draw up a ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper

... women are unworthy of votes; it is not even that votes are unworthy of women. It is that votes are unworthy of men, so long as they are merely votes; and have nothing in them of this ancient militarism of democracy. The only crowd worth talking to is the crowd that is ready to go somewhere and do something; the only demagogue worth hearing is he who can point at something to be done: and, if he points with a sword, will only feel it familiar and useful like an elongated finger. Now, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... rapid individual, he too; and shaped for action, first of all, though he has to talk so much in the world. Fastidious, proud, no King could be prouder, though his element is that of Free-Senate and Democracy. And he has a beautiful poetic delicacy, withal; great tenderness in him, playfulness, grace; in all ways, an airy as well as a solid loftiness of mind. Not born a King,—alas, no, not officially so, only naturally so; has his kingdom to seek. The Conquering of Silesia, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... mentioned as having crossed that river during the reign of the Emperor Justin I (518-27). They were a loosely-knit congeries of tribes without any single leader or central authority; some say they merely possessed the instinct of anarchy, others that they were permeated with the ideals of democracy. What is certain is that amongst them neither leadership nor initiative was developed, and that they lacked both cohesion and organisation. The Eastern Slavs, the ancestors of the Russians, were ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... Judge Tisdale, and awarded it to one whose earnings in a factory had procured for her a thorough English education, the villagers, to use a vulgar phrase, were at once set by the ears, the aristocracy abusing, and the democracy upholding the dismayed trio, who, as the breeze blew harder, quietly resigned their office, and Devonshire was without ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes

... for you,' said he, not liking the smack of democracy that I threw in for fun, and looking uneasy. 'So,' sais he (by way of turning the conversation), 'the sagacity of dogs is very wonderful. I will tell you an anecdote of this one that has surprised everybody to whom I have ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton

... the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 there was mapped out a scheme of government admirably adapted to the liberty-loving, yet law-abiding, populations of the frontier. It was based on the broad principles of democracy, and it was sufficiently flexible to permit necessary changes as the scattered settlements developed into organized Territories and then into States. Geographical conditions, as well as racial inheritances, foreordained ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg

... fancy easily wanders, just because it lacks the support which would enable it to rise to a higher level. Thus the Pillars of Hercules disappeared when the Straits of Gibraltar became the gates of the oceans; and no Columbus could now persuade the Red Indians, whom the great American spirit of democracy receives into its civilizing schools, that the heavens are obedient to him, darkening the sun at his command; for eclipses are phenomena as well known to them as to the ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... whate'er he may have been, Low he lies as other men; On his mound the partridge drums, There the noisy blue-jay comes; Rank nor name nor pomp has he In the grave's democracy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... one of the most singular, disastrous, amazing, and, on the whole, humiliating years the European world ever saw. Not since the irruption of the Northern Barbarians has there been the like. Everywhere immeasurable Democracy rose monstrous, loud, blatant, inarticulate as the voice of Chaos. Everywhere the Official holy-of-holies was scandalously laid bare to dogs and the profane:—Enter, all the world, see what kind of Official holy ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... more than remind you how, in the very make of a man's soul, it is clear that unless there be exercised rigid self-control he will go all to pieces. The make of human nature, if I may say so, shows that it is not meant for a democracy ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... appears marked in them, and their social tone is not unnaturally inferred to bear the village stamp. Village-like they are, and it would be no gross incivility to describe them as large, respectable, prosperous, democratic villages. But even a village, in a great and vigorous democracy, where there are no overshadowing squires, where the "county" has no social existence, where the villagers are conscious of no superincumbent strata of gentility, piled upwards into vague regions of privilege—even a village ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.

... of woman's political rights as one-half the people. We ask no special privileges, no special legislation. We simply ask that you live up to the principles enunciated by the Democratic party from the time of Jefferson. By what principle of democracy do men assume to legislate for women? Women are part of the people; your very name signifies government by the people. When you deny political rights to women you are false ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... storms by pacific counsels. Compared, therefore, with the common mercenary orators of the Athenian forum—who made a regular trade of promoting mischief, by inflaming the pride, jealousy, vengeance, or the martial instincts of a 'fierce democracy,' and, generally speaking, with no views, high or low, sound or unsound, that looked beyond the momentary profit to themselves from thus pandering to the thoughtless nationality of a most sensitive people—Isocrates is entitled ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... crater. "The worst sentiments are everywhere publicly advocated; the licentiousness of the press has reached a pinnacle which menaces us with ruin; there is no law which these shameless newspapers respect; no rank which is safe from their attacks; no ancient landmark which the lava-flood of democracy does not threaten ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray



Words linked to "Democracy" :   democratize, political theory, Weimar Republic, majority rule, political system, parliamentary democracy, social democracy, school of thought, democratic



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