“What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority.” -Lippmann
“Our life is connected more and more with experts, but on the other hand, we are less prepared to accept other people’s judgements when making decisions… Democracy is the continual struggle between the expert and the common man.” -Neurath
‘Democracy, and democratic liberties, for all that they are relative and precarious, nonetheless still afford the working class better conditions under which to struggle for its own interests.’ -Thorez
“But the democrat, because he represents the petty bourgeoisie — that is, a transition class, in which the interests of two classes are simultaneously mutually blunted — imagines himself elevated above class antagonism generally.” -Marx
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society… It is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically.” -Bernays
“That rifle on the wall of the labourer’s cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.” -Orwell
“Societies organized around a hierarchy of privilege can afford multiple standards, but a democracy cannot. Double standards mean second-class citizenship.” -Lasch
“The serious threat to our democracy is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions similar to those which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon the Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is accordingly here -within ourselves and our institutions…[it] can be won only by extending the application of democratic methods, methods of consultation, persuasion, negotiation, communication, cooperative intelligence, in the task of making our own politics, industry, education, our culture generally, a servant and an evolving manifestation of democratic ideas.” -Dewey
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