"Democracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meals, the public education, the crypteia are borrowed from Sparta and not from Athens, and the superintendence of private life, which was to be practised by the governors, has also its prototype in Sparta. The extravagant dislike which Plato shows both to a naval power and to extreme democracy is the reverse ...
— Laws • Plato
... extracts memorized in the primary schools. The child begins his education with Ariel and the fairies, and until his schooling is completed is kept in almost daily intercourse with the poetry and persons of the dramas. Homer was not better known in Athens. In a democracy still young and widely separated from older nations and cultures, Shakespeare has become one of the links that bind the American public not only to the common inheritances of the English-speaking races, but to ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson
... as in word, the equal rights of all men. But what more absurd than such an equality of rights? It is not without example in history; but it is to be hoped that such example will never be copied. The democracy of Athens, it is well known, was, at one time, so far carried away by the idea of equal rights, that her generals and orators and poets were elected by the lot. This was an equality, not in theory merely, but in practice. Though the lives and fortunes of mankind were thus ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... all the world over, consist, and have always consisted, of barbaric conquerors or their descendants, who remain to the last, on the average of instances, at a lower grade of civilisation and morals than the democracy they live among. ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... genial democracy of the race-track, the chauffeur lifted his head to grin appreciatively. "That listens ...
— The Man Who Could Not Lose • Richard Harding Davis
... interests of the Marquis of Castleton.' Thus, the state of the Continent, the policy of Metternich, the condition of the Papacy, the growth of Dissent, the proper mode of dealing with the spirit of democracy which was the epidemic of European monarchies, the relative proportions of the agricultural and manufacturing population, corn-laws, currency, and the laws that regulate wages, a criticism on the leading speakers in the House of Commons, with some discursive ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... sir," said Erskine, "and I think Lennard will too. There has never been an instance in history in which democracy did not spell degeneration. It's a pity, but I suppose it's inevitable. As far as my reading has taken me, it seems to be the dry-rot of nations. Halloa, what's that? Torpedo gunboat, I think! Ah, there's the moon. Now, sir, if you'll just come and stand to the ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... distinction of ranks and persons is the firmest basis of a mixed and limited government. The perfect equality of men is the point in which the extremes of democracy and despotism are confounded; since the majesty of the prince or people would be offended, if any heads were exalted above the level of their fellow-slaves or fellow-citizens. In the decline of the Roman Empire, the proud distinctions of the republic ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... people, yet we feel that the work of our associations is educational and legislative in its character. Democratic rule requires that the average citizen be an active, instructed and intelligent ruler of his country and therefore the success of democracy depends upon the education of the people along two principal lines—first, political knowledge; second, and what is of far more importance, political morality. Ideal government is found when we have righteous rulers ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... Buttafuoco in 1768.[14] The phrase has an obvious reference to the Paoli of 1791, surrounded by men who had shared his long exile and regarded the English constitution as their model. Buonaparte, on the contrary, is the accredited champion of French democracy, his furious epistle being printed by ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... necessary to have a reserve of philanthropists, but we trust it to men who have made themselves rich, not to men who have made themselves poor. Finally, the abbots and abbesses were elective. They introduced representative government, unknown to ancient democracy, and in itself a semi-sacramental idea. If we could look from the outside at our own institutions, we should see that the very notion of turning a thousand men into one large man walking to Westminster is not only an act or faith, but a fairy tale. The fruitful and ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the fervour with which he greeted Dickens, was due to his regarding Dickens as the representative of democratic feeling in aristocratic England, as the advocate of the poor and down-trodden against the wealthy and the strong; "and"—thus argued Jonathan—"because we are a democracy, therefore Dickens will admire and love us, and see how immeasurably superior we are to the retrograde Britishers of his native land." But unfortunately Dickens showed no signs of being impressed in that particular way. On the contrary, as we have seen, ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... put down, were discussed by Lincoln and Davis, by Meade and Lee, at Gettysburg, and by Grant and Pemberton, at Vicksburg. Is a State or is the Republic supreme, has been the central question dividing parties for a hundred years. The Democracy are still talking about "sovereign and independent states," as if there were more than one sovereign State on the continent—the ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... described in his remarkable Brabantsche Yeesten the struggle of the duke against his enemies. His attitude of mind is thoroughly typical of the time. Boendaele is a bourgeois poet, and distrusts equally the democracy of the towns and the nobility. He places his faith in the prince, ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... For the East End formed a Federation of the smaller synagogues to oppose the dominance of the United Synagogue, importing a minister of superior orthodoxy from the Continent, and the Flag had powerful leaders on the great struggle between plutocracy and democracy, and the voice of Mr. Henry Goldsmith was heard on behalf of Whitechapel. And the West, in so far as it had spiritual aspirations, fed them on non-Jewish literature and the higher thought of the age. The finer spirits, indeed, were groping for a purpose and a destiny, doubtful even, ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... the great thing, after all; and I love Maggie Windsor. I have little enough to offer her, not even my life, for that I promised to John Dacre, and the reversion is not worth much, I fear. My title! Ah, that is an offering indeed; a title by courtesy, in a democracy which at the same time sneers at and cringes to it. But I love her, and if a man comes to a woman with a sincere love he ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... A great man is ever, as the transcendentalists speak, possessed with an idea. Napoleon, himself not the superfinest of great men, and balanced sufficiently with prudence and egoisms, had nevertheless, as is clear enough, an idea to start with; the idea that democracy was the cause of man, the right and infinite cause. Nay, to the very last, he had a kind of idea, that, namely, of 'the tools to him that can handle them;' really one of the best ideas yet promulgated on that matter, or rather the one true central idea, toward which all the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... average English Home Ruler was, it will be remembered, simple and intelligible. The Irish had stated in the proper constitutional way what they wanted, and that, in the first flush of a victorious democracy, when counting heads irrespective of contents was the popular method of arriving at political truth, was assumed to be precisely what they ought to have. A long but inconclusive contest ensued. At times it looked ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... Jean in the beginning of the 16th century left to his son Jean II the task of upholding the old ideals of the Gruyere house against the continually growing democracy in Switzerland, as well as against the advance of religious reform. Endowed with all his father's firmness, he possessed the chivalric ardor of his predecessors and a full share of their personal charm. The long and intimate ...
— The Counts of Gruyere • Mrs. Reginald de Koven
... or the intolerable gloom of the Coffee Room. It is the real democrat like the Frenchman or the Italian who knows how to take his ease in a cafe; the Englishman, who hasn't an inkling of what the democracy he boasts of means, fights shy of it. He does not mind making use of it when he is away from home, but he is likely to be thanking his stars all the time that in his part of the world nothing so promiscuous is possible. I tried ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... the passion of possession. How they all envied, and hated, in their longing for more land! How property kept them apart, prevented the close, confident touch of friendship, how it separated lovers and ruined families! Of all obstacles to that complete democracy of which we dream, is there ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... hot-shot interplanetary businessman coming in with some big deal that would eventually cause the feudalistic nobility to be tossed onto the ash heap. A planet with a dictatorship doesn't want subversives from some democracy trying to undermine their ...
— Ultima Thule • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... 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 and fisticuffs, when one party dared to charge, and the ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... A simple democracy exists among these people, and they have a variety of tribal offices to fill. In this way the men of the tribe are graded, and they pass from grade to grade by a selection practically made by the people. And this leads to a constant discussion ...
— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell
... staff were to be so many knights-errant defending the virtue of the English Language. No loose slip-shod journalistic phrase would be permitted in its columns. Its articles, besides being well reasoned, would be examples of the purity it preached. It was to set its face sternly against Democracy, ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... city might be callous to the miseries of their fellows; those provided with plenty might be content to live their lives side by side with such hopeless poverty, might even apply to their own profit the necessities of others; but his was the hospitality and consideration of the frontier, the democracy that shares its last loaf with its fellow no matter who he may be, and shares it without question. The heartless selfishness of the conditions he was observing almost made his blood boil. He felt that he was amid an alien people: their standards were not as his standards, their lives ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... fundamental principles of democracy and an unceasing devotion to Napoleon constitute the chief elements of Hazlitt's political character. He sets forth his idea of representative government exactly in the manner of Rousseau when he proclaims that "in matters of feeling and common sense, of which ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... be made, and all the enterprises to be undertaken. The nation elected its chief, exercised the legislative power in the Champs de Mars under the presidentship of the king, and the judicial power in the courts under the direction of one of his officers. Under the feudal regime, this royal democracy gave way to a royal aristocracy. Absolute power ascended higher, the nobles stripped the people of it, as the prince afterwards despoiled the nobles. At this period the monarch had become hereditary; not as king, but as individually possessor of a fief; the legislative authority belonged to ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet
... circumstances, a sudden strong reaction against mob rule and untrammelled democracy ran through the country, swinging all men of property and law-abiding habits powerfully in favour of the demand {138} for a new, genuinely authoritative, national government, able to compel peace and good order. So the leaders of the reform party struck; and ...
— The Wars Between England and America • T. C. Smith
... The Seven Cardinal Vices, with their conspicuous royal exponents in the shape of seven vicious kings and emperors; the other, The Seven Cardinal Virtues, with the royalties who had been their notable exponents. Here is a frank criticism on the lives of kings which smacks of latter-day democracy. All these tapestries were enriched with gold of Cyprus, as ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... love with life, colour, form, music and beauty, he had the dash and brilliancy, the warmth and enthusiasm of a born leader of men. The impulsive champion of the people, the friend of the weak, he had become the patriot prophet of a larger democracy. ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... persuaded that the most thorough English Conservative may admire the Athenian republic; so far at least admire as to admit that it is impossible to conceive how, under any other form of government, the peculiar glories of Athens could have shone forth. And, indeed, an Athenian democracy differs so entirely from any political institution which the world sees at present, or will ever see again, that to carry the strife of our politics back into those times, in other than a quite general manner, is as futile as it is tasteless and vexatious. After ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... interested; or will they view the model of Government prepar'd for us as a Sistem for the whole Continent. Will they, as unconcern'd Spectators, look upon it to be design'd only to top off the exuberant Branches of Democracy in the Constitution of this Province? Or, as part of a plan to reduce them all to Slavery? These are Questions, in my Opinion of Importance, which I trust will be thoroughly weighed in a general Congress.—May God inspire ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... men. They show up the crooks, and they can point out praise when public praise is due. They expose the grafters and help to elect the right man to office. They root out public evils and push reform measures through. They're Democracy, ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... begins in theocracy and ends in democracy. This law of liberty following unity is written in architecture. For, let us insist upon this point, masonry must not be thought to be powerful only in erecting the temple and in expressing the myth and sacerdotal symbolism; in inscribing in hieroglyphs upon its pages of ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... am not going too far when I say that this is almost, if not quite, the first occasion upon which what is called the British democracy in its full strength has been brought directly face to face with the difficulties of Indian Government in all their intricacies, all their complexities, all their subtleties, and above all in their enormous magnitude. Last year when I had the honour of addressing the House on the ...
— Indian speeches (1907-1909) • John Morley (AKA Viscount Morley)
... multiplying regulations. I am inclined to think that it is a mistake to run institutions on purely democratic lines, not because reasonable liberty would degenerate into licence, but because there would be no liberty at all. If democracy ever comes to its own, and the will of the people actually prevails, we may all find ourselves so tied up with laws regulating our conduct that we will wish ourselves back under ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... which their fathers had to deal. Yet as we face the future, tasks enough await us. The republic to which Robert Shaw and a quarter of a million like him were faithful unto death is no republic that can live at ease hereafter on the interest of what they have won. Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark, and neither laws nor monuments, neither battleships nor public libraries, nor great newspapers nor booming stocks; neither mechanical invention nor political adroitness, ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... abandoned. Shirley and Johnson. Results of the Campaign. The Scourge of the Border. Trials of Washington. Misery of the Settlers. Horror of their Situation. Philadelphia and the Quakers. Disputes with the Penns. Democracy and Feudalism. Pennsylvanian Population. Appeals from the Frontier. Quarrel of Governor and Assembly. Help refused. Desperation of the Borderers. Fire and Slaughter. The Assembly alarmed. They pass a mock Militia Law. They are forced ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... forward to the presidential campaign of 1888 the Democracy had no difficulty in selecting its leader or its slogan. The custom, almost like law, of renominating a presidential incumbent at the end of his first term, pointed to Mr. Cleveland's candidacy, as did the considerable success of his administration in quelling factions and in silencing ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... breath against" a pending bill. Atherton was infamous as the mover of the "gag" resolution, and Mr. Adams abhorred him accordingly. (p. 299) Duncan, of Cincinnati, mentioned as "delivering a dose of balderdash," is described as "the prime bully of the Kinderhook Democracy," without "perception of any moral distinction between truth and falsehood, ... a thorough-going hack-demagogue, coarse, vulgar, and impudent, with a vein of low humor exactly suited to the rabble of a popular city and equally so to the taste of the present House of Representatives." Other ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... Washington an officer in the English Army, and Christ, our Lord, a Jew. Geography, as it is now taught with copious illustrations and descriptions, shows undreamed-of beauties in countries hitherto despised. And gradually, as the pupils move on from class to class, they learn true democracy and man's brotherhood ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... them," she said. "You also know that even if they were hostile to you, you could stay and compel them to acknowledge you. I fancy you once admitted as much to me. What has become of the pride of the democracy you showed me?" ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... throbbing hearts for purposes of war, must go, just as we have sent to limbo the jangling, jarring, jealous gods. Also, the better sentiment of the world will send the czars, emperors, kings, grand dukes, and the greedy grafters of so-called democracy, into the dust-heap of oblivion, with all the priestly phantoms that have obscured the sun and blackened the sky. The gods have ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... socialist, weary of life, plunges into the sea and awakes in the lost island of Atlantis, known as the Scarlet Empire, where a social democracy is in full operation, granting every man a living but limiting food, conversation, ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... to join the sects which have a fixed doctrine and allow less independence to their preachers, the great danger which menaces the Church comes from the State itself. The progress of dissent and of democracy in the legislature will make the Church more and more entirely dependent on the will of the majority, and will drive the best men from the communion of a servile establishment. The rise and fortunes of Methodism are related with peculiar predilection by the ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... backer of "the divine right of kings"; and it has found itself bound hand and foot in the character of a national or state Church; and with a curious incapacity to learn anything from experience is now enthusiastically cheering for democracy! Poor Church, whose leaders ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry
... the still October air rang with the sound of their gay, young voices. The majority of them were well-dressed, although here and there might be seen a last year's hat or coat that no one seemed to notice or to mind. Overton had a reputation for democracy in spite of the fact that most of its students came from homes where there ...
— Grace Harlowe's First Year at Overton College • Jessie Graham Flower
... was printed in 1836, La Chute d'Un Ange in 1838, and Les Recueillements in 1839. A political as well as a literary sensation was produced by his Histoire des Girondins, 1847, which, in fact, was inspired by his newly acquired belief in democracy. He became Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Provisional Government in 1848, was elected to the new Assembly from ten different departments, and became a member of the Executive Committee, which made him one of the most conspicuous statesmen of Europe. He was unsuited, however, for executive ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... folly were never before combined as in the men who lately ruled here, according to Bernard. The Commander-in-Chief and the Governor sent despatches to Lord Hillsborough on the same day (October 31, 1768). Gage informed the Secretary that the constitution of the Province leaned so much to the side of democracy that the Governor had not the power to remedy the disorders that happened in it; Bernard informed him that indulgence towards the Province, whence all the mischief had arisen, would ever have the same effect that it had had hitherto, led on from claim to claim ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... final reputation will rest. But it is certain that he will long be esteemed for the grace, vivacity, and eloquence of the prose in which he placed before the world his views of such great American principles and personalities as are dealt with in the two following essays on "Democracy" ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... of the magnitude of governmental power over the individual, and differing theories of the relations of church and State. The East having accepted caste as the basis of its society naturally adopted the policy of government by a favorite minority, the West inclined more and more toward democracy. The latter considered representatives only those who had been elected as such by a majority of the people of the district in which they lived; the former believed in a more restricted electorate, and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... difficulty in repressing a smile at the incongruity of the title. In fact perhaps no term could have been found that would have been less appropriate. For Walter King possessed neither dignity of rank nor of stature. On the contrary he was a short, snub-nosed boy of fifteen, the epitome of good humor and democracy. ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... time! Two colonels were among the captured, a regimental and a battalion commander. The senior was a baron—one cannot leave him out of any narrative—and inclined to bear himself with patrician contempt toward the Canadian democracy, which is a mistake for barons in his situation with every Canadian more or less of a king that day. When he tried to start his men into a revolt his hosts acted promptly, with the result that the uprising was nipped in the bud and ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... infringement of the great law of human brotherhood; and because they would "call no man master," they said thou to every person, without distinction of rank. To the conservatives of their day, this spiritual democracy seemed like deliberate contempt of authority; and as such, deserving of severe punishment. More strenuously than all other things, they denied the right of any set of men to prescribe a creed for others. The only authority they recognized was "the light within;" and for freedom to follow ...
— Isaac T. Hopper • L. Maria Child
... institutions" observed Mr. Quirk, with dark significance, as he looked up from his steak and onions. "I tell you deer-forests are doomed; grouse-moors are doomed; salmon-rivers are doomed. They are a survival of feudal rights and privileges which the new democracy—the new ruling power—will make short work of. The time has gone by for all these absurd restrictions and reservations! There is no defence for them; there never was; they were conceived in an iniquity of logic which modern common-sense will no longer suffer. Bona vacantia ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... majority of the Greeks to the knowledge of the American people, who have struggled for so long to establish free speech as the fundamental right of a free people. Here in Greece we are confronted by the question whether we are to have a democracy presided over by a king or whether at this hour of our history we must accept the doctrine of the divine rights of kings. The present government represents in no sense the majority of the Greek people. We Liberals, in the course of a year received the vote of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... easily led astray and blinded by passion, that he thought us unfit to govern others, and that we should limit our efforts to self-government. His confidence in man was no greater than that which is the foundation of Christianity. The whole Christian scheme is one of the broadest democracy. The most important truths are there submitted to the general judgment and conscience of mankind, with no other recommendation than their value and the force of the evidence by which they are attested. Can it be said that we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II., November, 1858., No. XIII. • Various
... and firm. The very sincerity of his desire to attain a reform rendered him clear-sighted as to the means to be pursued; and while he wished that the people should be allowed every degree of liberty consistent with safety, no man was less inclined to democracy, or could feel more horror at the idea of involving his country in a ...
— Richard Lovell Edgeworth - A Selection From His Memoir • Richard Lovell Edgeworth
... exclusive control of the Executive. "They propose," said the Times, "to repeat upon him precisely the trick which they practised with such brilliant success upon John Tyler and Millard Fillmore, both of whom were taken up by the Democracy, their policy endorsed, and their supporters denounced. Both were flattered with the promise of a Democratic nomination and both were weak enough to listen and yield to the temptation. Both were used unscrupulously to betray their principles and their friends, and when ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... have been reading. Among others, Longfellow's "Hiawatha" and "Evangeline," both exquisite; continually the "In Memoriam," "Idylls of the King"; some of Buchanan, which I scarcely recommend; M. Arnold, which I do most heartily recommend; and Walt Whitman, the {6} great poet of democracy; "Confessions of an English Opium Eater," by De Quincey, good in its way; G. Eliot and Mrs. Browning, &c., &c. Perhaps you would like some of those. I read Chas. Kingsley's "Andromeda"—it is really a splendid rhythmical piece of hexameter—and some of his Life. I rather like pieces ...
— Letters to His Friends • Forbes Robinson
... your feeling about—about democracy. I see your point of view but I can't take it. I know that you are right but I'm afraid my education is too strong for me. I don't believe in the people as you do. It's beautiful when you say it. I like to hear you. And I would not wish you to feel as I do. I'd hate ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... Constituent Assembly or the Convention. The Jacobin faction dealt simply with politics through the abstract notions of Rousseau: but of what use are "human rights" if we have to begin de novo to put into operation?—rather let us unite the conservative educationalism of Socialism with the wild democracy of ignorance. Politics never can be successful ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... was entrusted with the charge of the king, to countermine Cassander, sent a letter to the city, declaring in the name of the king, that he restored them their democracy, and that the whole Athenian people were at liberty to conduct their commonwealth according to their ancient customs and constitutions. The object of these pretenses was merely the overthrow of Phocion's influence, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... in democracy guided by true leaders. This reservation was not a compromise. It was a cardinal principle. He could conceive of no democracy worth creating or preserving which did not produce the superman to lead, shape, inspire and direct its life. The man called of God to this work was fulfilling ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... she had found that possible. She had been graduated with honors from the local high school, and, being a book-lover of catholic taste and wide range, she was, perhaps, more solidly educated than the majority of girls who have had opportunities for so-called higher education. With the broad democracy of sawmill towns, she had not, in the days gone by, been excluded from the social life of the town, such as it was, and she had had her beaus, such as they were. Sometimes she wondered how the choir in the Presbyterian church had ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... are ashamed of cheap carpets or wooden mantelpieces. Not for those who run in debt will the fish bite; nor for those who pretend to be richer or better or wiser than they are. No! But we have found, in our lives, that in a great democracy there reigns a great and gracious sovereign. We have found that this sovereign, in a reckless and unconscious way, is, all the time, making the most profuse provision for all the citizens. We have found that those who are not ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... look ahead, vers libre, even when more libre than vers, is full of meaning—poetic realism, even when more real than poetry, charged with possibility. For with all its imperfections much of this new poetry is trying to mean more than ever before to the general reader. I am not sure that the democracy can be interpreted for him in noble poetry and remain the democracy he knows. And yet I think, and I believe, that, in his sub-consciousness at least, he feels an intense longing to find the everyday life in which we all live—so thrilling beneath the surface—interpreted, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby
... the management of affairs, who are at the top of the tree, are desirous of giving to all an opportunity of raising themselves in the scale of human beings. I dislike universal suffrage; I dislike votes by ballot; I dislike above all things the tyranny of democracy. But I do like the political feeling—for it is a political feeling—which induces every educated American to lend a hand to the education of his fellow-citizens. It shows, if nothing else does so, a germ of truth in that doctrine of equality. It is a doctrine to be forgiven ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... governors, chief magistrates, and kings; dissolves civil governments; suspends commerce; annuls civil laws; and, to gratify its unsanctified lust of ambition, it has overrun whole nations with bloodshed, and thrown them into confusion. So it is with this "Bogus" Democracy: it wages a war of extermination against the freedom of the press, and against the liberty of speech, the rights of human conscience, and the liberties of man: hence its indiscriminate proscription of all who dare to unite ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... knowing how to differ decently.' Gibbon (Misc. Works, i. 304), describing in 1789 the honestest members of the French Assembly, calls them 'a set of wild visionaries, like our Dr. Price, who gravely debate, and dream about the establishment of a pure and perfect democracy of five and twenty millions, the virtues of the golden age, and the primitive rights and equality of mankind.' Admiration of Price made Samuel Rogers, when a boy, wish to be a preacher. 'I thought there was nothing on earth so grand as to figure ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... "But wouldn't it be more in accord with your principles of democracy if we all drew straws, or something along that line? After all, democracy is to protect the minority from just such infringements. Now, if each of us casts ...
— Beyond Lies the Wub • Philip Kindred Dick
... hardly know how or why. Mr. Balfour gives the name of 'authority' to all those influences, born of the intellectual climate, that make hypotheses possible or impossible for us, alive or dead. Here in this room, we all of us believe in molecules and the conservation of energy, in democracy and necessary progress, in Protestant Christianity and the duty of fighting for 'the doctrine of the immortal Monroe,' all for no reasons worthy of the name. We see into these matters with no more inner ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 6 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe
... more than democracy is the strife between capital and skilled labour. This appears to me to be among the most pressing questions of the day, and I shall think well of the statesman, whoever he may be, who, with a just but firm hand, shall regulate ...
— Memoirs of James Robert Hope-Scott, Volume 2 • Robert Ornsby
... And laying the book on the ground he began, as if inspired by what he had read, to write a note upon the importance of history—upon democracy—one of those scribbles upon which the work of a lifetime may be based; or again, it falls out of a book twenty years later, and one can't remember a word of it. It is a little painful. It had better ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of ...
— The Treaty of the European Union, Maastricht Treaty, 7th February, 1992 • European Union
... boarders did not fight with knives at the Bucket of Blood. Knifing is not an American game. We fought with fists, coffee cups and pieces of furniture, after the furniture went to pieces. We were not fighting to make the world safe for democracy, although we were the most democratic fellows in the world. We slept two to a bed, four to a room. Not always the same four, for like soldiers on the firing line, some comrade was ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... 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 throughout ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... anything more practical for such a man's life than respecting it until he respects it himself, and we are convinced also that until he does respect it himself, respecting it for him is the only thing that any one else can do—the beginning and end of all action for him and of all knowledge. Democracy to-day in education—as in everything else—is facing its supreme opportunity. Going about in the world respecting men until they respect themselves is almost the only practical way there is of ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... and tales to which he had been an ardent listener. We find the great Pushkin dedicating his most pathetic verses to his old nurse, and we often see him inspired by the most humble people. In this way, to the theoretic democracy imported from Europe is united, in the case of the Russian author, a treasure of ardent personal recollections; democracy is not for him an abstract love of the people, but a real affection, a tenderness made up of lasting reminiscences which he ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... After a time the family broadens to the tribe, and then the tribe to the nation. The evolution of social institutions is at present going on at an enormously rapid rate. Throughout the civilized world democracy is coming to its own. Even where the form of monarchy still prevails, the subjects of the monarch are having more and more rights. The people of England are surely as free as are the people of the United States. Increasingly all forms of government ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... had not been commenced by the aristocracy, but by the democracy. It broke out in the towns of Brescia and Bergamo, and the senate, in its turn, raised the mountaineers and the anti-revolutionary peasants, who proceeded to every species of atrocity: their watchword being "Death to Frenchmen and Jacobins." On Easter Monday more than four hundred Frenchmen ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... case with the lawyers. Or he has a body of men at his back ready to support him on this side or on that, as we see with commercial men. Or perhaps he has some vague idea that aristocracy is pleasant, and he becomes a Conservative,—or that democracy is prospering, and he becomes a Liberal. You are a Liberal, ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... weren't. On this and other matter, however, the individual reader, having paid his money (7s. 6d. net), remains at liberty to take his choice. One revelation at least emerges clearly enough from Lord HALDANE'S pages—the danger of playing diplomat to a democracy. "Extremists, whether Chauvinist or Pacifist, are not helpful in avoiding wars" is one of many conclusions, double-edged perhaps, to which he is led by retrospect of his own trials. His book, while making no concessions to the modern ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... McKinley 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 ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... prevents America from adopting an industrial reform which has been adopted as just and necessary by practically the entire civilized world. We do not believe that the interpretation of the Court is correct. It is, in our opinion, in conflict alike with the progress of civilization, the spirit of democracy, the principles of social justice, and the analogies and tendencies of law. And we believe that this unconscious attempt to fasten upon the workingman an unjust and intolerable burden from which all other civilized nations, ...
— The Making of Arguments • J. H. Gardiner
... possess: a lingering sense of respect for a good woman. Until the night of the attack upon her by the hoboes in the railroad yard, he had never dared to presume to the extent of speaking to Donna Corblay, even when paying for his meals, although the democracy of San Pasqual would not have construed speech at such a time as a breach of convention. For there were no angels in San Pasqual; the town was merely sunk in a moral lethargy, and the line of demarcation in matters of ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... they lived and worked and studied; very happy, with only now and then twinges of fear for the future, for it would look a little black at times, do all they could to laugh away the clouds. It was a little democracy of four, with high hopes and lofty ideals. Mutual tasks and mutual hardships bound them together in a love that was as strong as it ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... government. For, above all else, the Solar Alliance was a government of the people. And to assure the survival and continuance of that democratic system, the officers of the Solar Guard functioned as the watchdogs of the space democracy, entrusted with the vital mission of making sure the government reflected the will ...
— Sabotage in Space • Carey Rockwell
... form similar groups. Just as William Walters, a Quaker, reminds Captain Singleton and the crew that their business is not fighting but making money, so Carracioli addresses lengthy speeches to the crew, converting everyone on the Victoire to democracy and deism. Misson's Libertalia takes root in Madagascar, where Singleton wanted to establish a colony, while both Carracioli and Walters adapt the secular aspects of their religion to piracy. But whereas Walters eventually converts Singleton ...
— Of Captain Mission • Daniel Defoe
... the 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 ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... is n't a matter of geography. There's not a village in the United States that does n't have its classes. The more loudly they brag of their democracy, the greater the distance from ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... it is easier to govern others, than oneself. And that all men should govern themselves as nations, needs that all men be better, and wiser, than the wisest of one-man rulers. But in no stable democracy do all men govern themselves. Though an army be all volunteers, martial law must prevail. Delegate your power, you leagued mortals must. The hazard you must stand. And though unlike King Bello of Dominora, ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. II (of 2) • Herman Melville
... and don't like democracy. I suppose so." Still smiling at her he added, "One forgets democracies when one looks at you. You ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... 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
... suffering serious ravages. In the new administrative system the places which led to promotion had now for a long time been given to members of the old nobility; the recipients looked on them as their right, and neither they nor their families were grateful, while the sturdy democracy felt slighted and injured. Even the new nobility grew more unmanageable with every day. In full possession of their estates, titles, and incomes, they felt their independence, and refused to be longer guided by the hand which had led them into ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... which was, that magistrates and people are equally subject to the law, and that the divine right of kings to rule is as nothing beside the divine right of the people to defend their liberties. That argument established Milton's position as the literary champion of democracy. He was chosen Secretary of the Commonwealth, his duties being to prepare the Latin correspondence with foreign countries, and to confound all arguments of the Royalists. During the next decade Milton's pen and Cromwell's sword were the two outward ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... just returned empty-handed from a bunch of half-baked theorists who are heading us into socialism and calling it democracy! ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings
... the first manuscripts and books phrased in Latin but most of the very early printed books were written in the same language," he answered. "In those days learning was not for the general public. There was no such spirit of democracy known as now exists. It cheapened a thing to have it within the reach of the vulgar herd. Even Horace, much as we honor him, once complained because some of his odes had strayed into the hands of the common people 'for whom they were not intended.' Books, in the olden time, were held ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... return to Wittenberg, the flood of democracy was rising among the people. He had opened the monasteries; now the people called for redress against many other social evils, such as the misery of the peasants, the tithes, the traffic in benefices, the bad administration of justice. ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • 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 to our respect. His writings have also a separate ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... thinking of that historical character who made just such a journey more than a hundred years before,—a great soldier who left his homeland to sail to other foreign shores halfway around the world and there to lend his sword in the fight for the sacred principles of Democracy. It seemed to me that day that ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... distributed funds freely to the people, in the shape of 'Festival-money', adopting the methods employed before him by demagogues, very different from himself, in order that he might override the real sentiments of the democracy; and in spite of the large amounts thus spent he did in fact succeed, in the course of a few years, in collecting a considerable sum without resorting to extraordinary taxation, in greatly increasing the navy and in enlarging ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 1 • Demosthenes |
