[fastpat]

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.

Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!
H. L. Mencken