"It was said in the Ethics that the happy life is the life that is lived in accord with virtue, and that virtue is a middle course [i.e. moderation]. It necessarily follows, speaking of what is generally best for most people, that a moderate democracy under law aiming at freedom and equality, based on the rule of middle class, is best. . . . For the middle class is the readiest to be moderate and reasonable; whereas a person who is exceedingly powerful or rich or well-connected--or the opposite, exceedingly weak and poor--finds it difficult to be governed by reason. [The danger] is when democracy becomes extreme democracy or unmixed oligarchy: for a tyrany can result from both extremes." --Aristotle, Politics.

"Democracy is a device which ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve." --Bernard Shaw

"But a nation of philosophers is as little to be expected as the philosophical race of kings wished for by Plato. And in every other nation, the most rational government will not find it a superfluous advantage to have the prejudices of the community on its side." Publius [James Madison] Federalist No. 37.

"The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest reflection on human nature? If men were angels no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern man, neither internal nor external controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions." --Publius (Madison) Federalist 51

"The herd of men can hardly be said to think; their notions are almost all adoptive; and, in general, I believe it is better that it should be so; as such common prejudices contribute more to order and quiet, than their own separate reasoning would do, uncultivated and unimproved. We have many of those useful prejudices in this country, which I should be very sorry to see removed. --Earl of Chesterfield, Letters and Maxims of Lord Chesterfield.

"In all very numerous assemblies, of whatever characters composed, passion never fails to wrest the scepter from reason. Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." Publius [James Madison], Federalist No 55.

". . . so there are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career and to suspend the blow meditated by the people upon themselves, until reason, justice and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?" Publius (Madison), Federalist No. 63.

"The best of men may be sacrificed by a senseless mob; the works of art, the embellishments, the wealth, and the nationality of an empire may be torn down and swept away in the mad moment of popular revolt, which centuries of peace and prosperity have been spent in fashioning and acquiring." George E. Stephens [African-American Civil War soldier]

". . . it is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance." -George Wahington (himself a slaveowner, speaking to the Congregation Jeshuat Israel Touro Synegogue, Newport., RI, (1790).

"Every society must either resolve the conflicts of interest within its communal life by the methods of democracy or it must use force to subject the interests of one group to those of another. It is of course true that democracy may be the means of oppression as well as a method of arbitration. That is why the disinherited classes of Western civilization are so cynical about the pretensions of democracy, and it may be necessary therefore on occasion to challenge the pretensions of democracy with force." Reinhold Niebuhr, The Germans Unhappy Philosophers in Politics (1933)

"Most of the world's political difficulties today focus in men's preference for laying down principles and fighting over them rather than engaging in the give and take of discussion and eventual compromise. So it seems worthwhile to emphasize the importance of being unprincipled in political action. Cooperation between human beings is possible only if they are willing to compromise; and politics, the art of cooperation, of group action, is at bottom nothing but the practical application of the method of compromise. Only two kinds of men can really afford the luxury of acting always on principle: those who never act at all, who live in a sort of social vacuum . . . and those who have so much power they don't have to regard the wishes or habits of other men but can just give commands. These are the two kinds of men who know nothing about the art of cooperation, the impotent and the omnipotent--the college professor and the Supreme Court Justice. . . . .but of course no one really does act on principle alone, with complete logical consistency. For no man is so omnipotent, not even a dictator, that he does not have to resort to all kinds of compromises with his followers to secure the power to shoot those who disagree with him . . . . Europe is full of such men of principle today; and with so many principles and such intense faith in them it will be very lucky to get off without fanatical religious wars on a grand scale. It has very little political intelligence left: it has lost the ability to compromise." John Herman Randall Jr., On The Importance of Being Unprincipled, essay in the American Scholar (1938).

"History will teach . . . that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants." Publius (Alexander Hamilton), Federalist No. 1.

"[Democracy is vulnerable to degeneration into a tyranny when] . . . men ambitious of office by acting as popular leaders bring things to the point of the people's being sovereign over even the laws. [W]here. . . the multitude is sovereign and not the law, this comes about when the decrees of the ascembly over-ride the law. . . a democracy of this nature is comparable to a tyrannical form of monarchy . . . [B]oth exercise despotic control, and the decrees voted by the assembly are like the commands issued in a tyranny. [Demagogues] cause the resolution of the assembly to be supreme and not the laws, by referring all things to the people. They owe their power to the fact that the people are sovereign over all things while [the demagogues] are sovereign over the opinion of the people--for the multitude believes them." Aristotle, Politics.

"Eighty-nine and nine-tenths per cent of the German voters endorsed in yesterday's plebiscite Chancellor Hitler's assumption of greater power than has ever been possessed by any other ruler in modern times. Nearly 10 per cent indicated their disapproval. The result was expected." --Frederick T. Birchall, Special Cable to The New York Times, Monday, August 20, 1934.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." Publius [James Madison], Federalist 47.

--W.H. Auden

"The tyrant is also fond of making war in order that his subjects may have something to do and always be in want of a leader. . . . The charge which Plato brings, in the Laws, against the intention of the [Spartan] legislator, is likewise justified; the whole constitution has regard to one part of virtue only--the virtue of the soldier, which gives victory in war. And so long as they were at war, their power was preserved, but when they had attained empire they fell, for of the arts of peace they knew nothing, and had never engaged in any employment higher than war." Aristotle, Politics

"The orator yields to the inspiration of a transient occasion, and speaks to the mob before him, to those who can hear him; but the writer, whose more equable life is his occasion, and who would be distracted by the event and the crowd that inspire the orator, speaks to the intellect and the heart of mankind, to all in any age who can understand him." --Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

 "But evidently the United States constituted themselves, not amidst the circumstances of a feudal age, but in a modern age; not under the conditions of an epoch favorable to subordination, but under those of an epoch of expansion. . . . Let us treat as not more solid the assertion of the Declaration of Independence, that 'all men are created equal, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' Let us concede that these natural rights are a figment; that chance and circumstance, as much as deliberate foresight and design, have brought the United States into their present condition. . . . Its friends celebrate [democracy] as the author of all freedom. But political freedom may very well be established by aristocratic founders." ---Matthew Arnold, A Word More About America.

"My freshman seminar in American politics always begins with a discussion of the Declaration of Independence. Invariably, there are loads of bright freshmen who know all about it and who can discourse plausibly on the Declaration's roots in the Enlightenment, John Locke's influence on its authors, the economic interests that actuated its signers, and so forth. What these students have trouble with is the most basic question: is it true? The question never fails to floor them." --Charles R. Kesler, Education, Cultural Relativism, and the American Founding.

Polonius:
Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth;
And thus do we of wisdom and reach,
With windlasses and with assays of bias,
By indirections find directions out.

--William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

" . . . if the Scots Guards ran away at the Battle of Guildford Courthouse and had to be stopped from running any further by being shelled by Lord Cornwallis, it is impossible to give that event a clear niche in History while the Scots Guards are still in being and relying on regimental tradition to steady them. That your French generals look to the future of French morale by faking orders is reprehensible from the scientific point of view, but rather grand from the human point of view. Personally, I never fake in this sense, but as I say, I can see the point: to lie is a sacred duty to all people who wish to uphold sacred traditions." Robert Graves, Selected Correspondence.

--J. R. Pope

"Socrates: But my dear Crito, why should we pay attention to what most people think? The really reasonable people, who have more claim to be considered, will believe the facts are exactly as they are.

Crito: You can see for yourself, Socrates, that one has to think of popular opinion as well. Your present position is quite enough to show that the capacity of ordinary people for causing trouble is not confined to petty annoyances, but has hardly any limits if once you get a bad name with them. "
--Plato, Crito

"[The press] has defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it has created a United States Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is, they are so morally blind, and [the press] has made light of dishonesty till we have as a result a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody would worry about a little thing like that. . . That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditchdigging and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse." Mark Twain, License of the Press, A Talk Before the Monday Evening Club, Hartford, 1873.

"The fathers who contrived and passed the Constitution were wise in their generation; as time passes we come more and more to realize their powers of divination. And yet, as has been so often observed, they were curiously blind to the way in which the government they set up was to work; they apparently had no intimation of the role that party was to play . . . . Government as a compromise between more or less permanent and competing groups, seems not to have been contemplated . . . To promote their special interests they form groups with inconveniently long memories, before which their memories as undifferentiated voters are like the spring snows. . . One difficulty at any rate in the traditional theory [of an informed, watchful and involved electorate] is inherent; it arises from our necessary preoccupations and our incapacity to understand and deal with the multitude of questions that increasingly call for an answer in a desperately complicated world. . . . That was not the presupposition of our traditional democracy, which assumed an intelligent attention and capacity in public affairs, and a will directed toward the general good. We have surely outgrown the conditions it assumed, and the theory has ceased to work." --Judge Learned Hand, Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities.

"My faith in the two-party system is stronger than ever, because I learned the value of turnover. The amount of power that is concentrated in the nation's capitol is immense. Only a regular rotation of newcomers with a fresh perspective, with an intention to go home someday, and with an undiminished capacity for outrage, can restrain and counter the permanent and insular political class that has made Washington its home." Diane Ravitch, A Scholar in Washington.

[As to the quartering of soldiers:] "an act of Parliament, commanding us to do a certain thing, if it has any validity, is a tax upon us for the expense that accrues in complying with it . . . Are these men ignorant that usurpations, which might have been successfully opposed at first, acquire strength by continuance, and thus become irresistable? . . . All artful rulers, who strive to extend their power beyond its just limits, endeavor to give to their attempts as much semblance of legality as possible. Those who succeed then may venture to go a little further; for each new encroachment will be strengthened by a former. 'That which is now supported by examples, growing old, ill become an example itself, and thus support fresh usurpations.' . . .Nothing is more certain than that the forms of liberty may be retained when the substance is gone."- John Dickinson [citing Tacitus: Venienti occurrite morbo-oppose a disease at the beginning] in Letters from a Farmer

"The common will as the [public] official sees it, is not common at all; it is a complex of opposing forces, whose resultant has no relation to the common good, but which nevertheless decides whether he goes back [by re-election] or not. . . . And so the common good is squeezed out, and enterprises of great pith and moment fall by the way. The more compact, determined and relentless the groups with which he must deal, the more they have to say in his fate."--Judge Learned Hand, Democracy: Its Presumptions and Realities.

"Crowds . . . it must be remembered, can be stirred only by an appeal to what is most elemental in them, by images of violence and invocations to brutality. [Our contemporaries] have lost their sense of deference and no longer wish to observe the rules of conduct which were once firmly established. . . .[but] men in their hearts can no more do without being controlled than they can live without food, drink and sleep. As political animals they feel the need for organization, that is to say for an established order and for leaders." [With the old ties relaxed] the mainspring of command is to be found in the personal prestige of the leader. . . . The statesman must concentrate all his efforts on captivating men's minds. He must know when to dissemble, when to be frank. He must pose a servant of the public in order to become its master . . . . Charles de Gaulle, The Edge of the Sword.

"At what point is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up among us. . . .As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time. . . or die by suicide. . . . [The danger is] then, all that sought celebrity and fame and distinction, expected to find them in [the American] experiment . . . , [and now] [t]he field of glory is harvested, the crop is already appropriated. But new reapers will arise, and they too will seek a field. It is to deny, what the history of the world tells us is true, to suppose that men of ambition and talents will not continue to spring up among us. And when they do, they will continue to seek gratification of their ruling passion, as others have done before them . . . . Many a great and good men sufficiently qualified for any task they should undertake, may ever be found, whose ambition would aspire to nothing beyond a seat in Congress, a gubernatorial or a presidential chair; but such do not belong to the family of the lion, or the tribe of the eagle. What! Think you these places would satisfy an Alexander, a Ceaser, or a Napoleon? Never! Towering genius disdains a beaten path. It sees no distinction in adding story to story, upon the monuments to fame, erected to the memory of others. . . It thirsts and burns for disinction, and it will have it, whether at the expense of emancipating slaves, or enslaving free men." --Abraham Lincoln, The Pereptuation of Our Political Insitutions: Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.

Callicles: "But in my opinion those who framed the laws are the weaker folk, the majority. And accordingly they framed the laws for themselves and their own advantage, and so to with their approval and censure, to prevent the stronger who are able to overreach them from gaining an advantage . . . they are satisfied, I suppose, if by being inferior they enjoy equality of status . . . but in my view nature herself makes it plain it is right for the better to have advantage over the worse, the more able over the less. And both among animals and in entire states and races of mankind it is plain that this is the case that right is recognized to be the sovereignty and advantage of the stronger over the weaker." --Plato's Gorgias

". . . we took pains to humanize the character of Ricky Ricardo by bringing him down in earning power so the average person could identify with his problems. . . . We were never trying to manufacture something funny. Instead, we were looking for a situation where Lucy's and Ricky's problems and differences of opinion were the same ones that most of our audience encountered. We called it 'holding up the mirror.' . . . The rule of those who controlled the new medium of television was not to present anything that might offend anyone. (For instance) Lucy could not be 'pregnant' on T.V. --she had to be 'with child.' " Jess Oppenheimer, Laughs, Luck . . .And Lucy: How I Came To Create the Most Popular Sitcom of All Time.

"[T]he professional writer must please. Unless a sufficient number of persons can be found to read him he will starve . . . I was glad to earn a great deal of money as a dramatist. It gave me liberty. . . . I traveled; I lived in a house with a view of the sea, silent and apart from other habitations, in the middle of a garden, with spacious rooms. I have always thought life too short to do anything for oneself that one can pay others to do for one and I have been rich enough to afford myself the luxury of only doing for myself what I alone can do. I have been able to entertain my friends and to help people I wanted to help. All this I owe to the favor of the public." [He knew how to please the audience;] exactly how to write a successful play. I knew, that is to say, what I could expect from an audience. Without their collaberation I could do nothing and I knew how far their collaberation could go." W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up.

"Could intellect and high cultivation, " said he, "become the property of all, the poet would have fair play; he could be always thoroughly true, and would not be compelled to fear uttering his best thoughts. But, as it is, he must always keep on a certain level; must remember that his works will fall into the hands of a mixed society; and must, therefore, take care lest by over-great openness he may give offence to the majority of good men. Then, Time is a strange thing. It is a whimsical tyrant, which every century has a different face for everything one says and does. We cannot, with propriety, say things which were permitted to the ancient Greeks; and an Englishman of 1829 cannot endure what suited the vigorous contemporaries of Shakespeare . . ." Conversations of Goethe

"Wherever human beings are treated as men by the government, and not as mere things possessed, rulers have called the people or their representatives together from time to time for the purpose of deliberation. Such gatherings are the seeds from which parliaments grow. In only a few nations, however, has a parliamentary tradition been able to prosper through the centuries; contemporary parliaments are rarely the result of long-standing native tradition. . . . Modern conceptions of parliament grew out of the ferment of seventeenth-century England. . [Although] rhe English Parliament is traced back to the Anglo-Saxon witenagemot, a word that denoted etymologically a gathering of wise men and realistically an assembly of important lords within the administration." " John Clarke Adams, The Quest For Democratic Law

[In 1295 with France and Scotland simultaneously at war , King Edward I summoned Parliament citing a Roman dictum: Quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approboteur. . . "what concerns all, all must approve."]

"Although it could screw up from time to time, it was harder for the groupmind to go completely around the bend. The 'system' would not let that happen. On the other hand, the groupmind was poorly organized, easily distracted, hysterical, inaccurate, and insecure, especially about slights from the one-to-many world, although at the same time it was tenderhearted and quick to forgive these slights. It was God, but it was also a mob, and it could behave like a mob sometimes." John Seabrook, from Deeper--My Two-Year Odyssey in Cyberspace

"This is why the general public is a better judge of works of music and those of the poets, because different men can judge a different part of the performance, and all of them all of it."Aristotle, Politics

"A bullfighter will not be better than his audience very long. If they prefer tricks to sincerity they will soon get the tricks." --Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon