"Democracy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of all human peoples, engaged in a crusade to make the "World Safe for Democracy"! Can you imagine the United States protesting against Turkish atrocities in Armenia, while the Turks are silent about mobs in Chicago and St. Louis; what is Louvain compared with Memphis, Waco, Washington, Dyersburg, and Estill Springs? In short, what is the black man but America's Belgium, ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... there were nearly four thousand names in the last Royal bestowal of Orders of the British Empire? There's kingly munificence for you! It's the same with the Masonic order. The gentleman you address as 'Right Worshipful Sir' overnight delivers poultry and rabbits at your back door next morning. Democracy has come into its own, Brimsdown. Sooner or later we shall have a ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... atomy in his own recesses, a kind of hermit crab, the bulk of him a complex mechanism, a thing of rags and tatters and papier-mache, stolen from the earth and the plant-world and his fellow beasts? And at last may he not disappear altogether, none missing him, and a democracy of honest machinery, neatly clad and loaded up with sound principles of action, walk to and fro in a regenerate world? Thus it was my mind went dreaming in St. George's Hall. But presently, as I say, came the last word about stomachs, and the bald men woke up, rattled their ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... unless she took the Government permanently into her own hands. The plea on which the interference is to be based, viz. that the misgovernment at Naples brings Monarchical institutions into disrepute, and might place weapons in the hands of the democracy (as put forth by Sir W. Temple),[76] would be wholly insufficient to justify the proceeding. Whether such an armed interference in favour of the people of Naples against their Government would lead to a Revolution or not, ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States, a perfect Union, one and inseparable; established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... also 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
... miraculous transformation, we ourselves remain small, hard, and narrow, without great thoughts or great loves or immortal hopes. We are a crowd where the highest and the best lose individuality, and are swept along as though democracy were a tyranny of the average man under which superiority of whatever kind is criminal. Our population increases, our cities grow, our roads are lengthened, our machinery is made more perfect, the number of our schools is multiplied, our newspapers ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... 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 its side; that a ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book VI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... 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" and on "Abraham Lincoln." ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... dexterously upsets the chess-board, or extinguishes the lights. But Julius, the one sole patriot of Rome, could find no advantage to his plans in darkness or in confusion. Honestly supported, he would have crushed the oligarchies of Rome by crushing in its lairs that venal and hunger-bitten democracy which made oligarchy and its machineries resistless. Caesar's debts, far from being stimulants and exciting causes of his political ambition, stood in an inverse relation to the ambition; they were its results, and represented its natural costs, being contracted ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... something of the relations between the lepers and non-lepers as I observed them at Molokai. On the morning after our arrival Charmian and I attended a shoot of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, and caught our first glimpse of the democracy of affliction and alleviation that obtains. The club was just beginning a prize shoot for a cup put up by Mr. McVeigh, who is also a member of the club, as also are Dr. Goodhue and Dr. Hollmann, the resident physicians (who, by the way, live in the Settlement with their wives). All about us, ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... countenance gaining angelic elevation from "colloquy sublime" with glorified intelligence in the paradise above. Nor does he ever go out of his natural character. He is, indeed, the lover from infancy of Beatrice, the aristocratic magistrate of a fierce democracy, the valiant soldier in the field of Campaldino, the fervent patriot in the feuds of Guelphs and Ghibellines, the eloquent and subtle disputant in the school of theology, the melancholy exile wandering from court to court, depending for bread and shelter on petty princes ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... is not prepared for American citizenship, because our literature is needed to present the ideals of American life. There may be greater literatures, but none of them can possibly take the place of ours for citizens of this democracy. ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... "trend of human events." For the benefit of Sir Edwin and many other wealthy and cultured palace-car passengers who amuse themselves with theories; who infer that because human slavery is abolished in the Occident and the thrones of the Orient are beginning to totter before the might of democracy; because science is marching on to triumph after triumph, and no Spanish Inquisition or English Court of High Commission longer casts its upas-shadow athwart the hearts of men, the great world is "growing nobler ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... not be relinquished, and that they were of a nature to affect the chief magistrate materially, should his countenance not be withdrawn from that officer. It was equally apparent that the fervor of democracy, which was perpetually manifesting itself in the papers, in invectives against levees, against the trappings of royalty, and against the marks of peculiar respect which were paid to the President, must soon include him more pointedly ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing
... the smaller societies and those of the great European nations there is no useful parallel to be drawn, although the predominance of classical learning made it the fashion for a long time to apply Greek speculations on the nature of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy to public questions in modern Europe. Representation (q.v.), the characteristic principle of European constitutions, has, of course, no place in societies which were not too large to admit of every free citizen participating personally in the business of ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... was, a thorough, out and out Democrat. I supported General Jackson, and voted for every Democratic president after him, up to and including Pierce; for I really thought Pierce was a Democrat until he proved the contrary, as I conceived, in the Kansas question. My democracy goes for the greatest good to the greatest number, for equal and exact justice to all men, and for a submission to the will of the majority. It was the repudiation by the Southern Democracy of this great ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... Piedmontese and Neapolitan kings were driven away, as were the smaller princes of the other states; the Republic of Venice ceased to be, and the Pope became very much less a prince, if not more a priest, than he had been for a great many ages. In due time French democracy passed into French imperialism, and then French imperialism passed altogether away; and so after 1815 came the Holy Alliance with its consecrated contrivances for fettering mankind. Lombardy, with all Venetia, was ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... come a time in the no distant future when her splendid son would be called upon to go where she could not follow—a time when Hal and his associates would be over-seas fighting for the democracy of the world, as well as for the existence of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... spent the most of his time at Elmwood among his books and in the society of his friends. In 1888 a volume of his later poems appeared, bearing the title of "Heartsease and Rue." About the same time "Democracy," a collection of the addresses which he had delivered in England, was published. But neither of these volumes added materially to ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... pitiless storm of the passion of man for blood. The torch of Greece, the light of the Cross, the streaming portent of the Crescent, have shone from it, each in its time; all governments, from Greek democracy to Bourbon tyranny, have ruled it in turn; Roman law and feudal custom had it in charge, each a long age: yet civilization in all its historic forms has never here done more, seemingly, than alleviate at moments the hard human lot. And what has been the ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... result of your high tax? I continued with passion. It would be a blow at the democracy of dogs. It would reduce the whole of dogdom to a pampered class of degenerates. Is there anything more odious than the spectacle of a fat woman in furs nursing a lap dog in furs, too? It is as degrading to the noble family of dogs as a footman in gold buttons ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... especially in Brabant. Jean Boendaele (1280-1365) 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
... and the passionate love of liberty in the people at large? What was it which drove Dante into exile and stung the simple-hearted Dino into a burst of eloquent despair? The answer—if we set aside the silly talk about "democracy" and look simply at the facts themselves—is a very simple one. The ruin of Florentine liberty, like the ruin of liberty elsewhere throughout Italy, lay wholly with its noblesse. It was equally perilous for an Italian town to leave its nobles without the walls or to force them ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... admitted of England. We are not willing, openly and professedly, to assume that American citizens are broken up into classes, even if we make that assumption the preface to a plea that the superior class has duties to the inferior. Our democracy is still our most precious possession, and we do well to resent any inroads upon it, even though they may be made ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... for the reason that unlike radicalism it was not obstructive of "democratic advance" in that it did not alienate the western section of the state through its attitude towards the Negro. Native in its origin, the democracy of the party was primarily intended for the whites, though the Negroes were accepted as desirable supporters. Such an independent movement was impossible until the continued defeat of the Republican party sufficiently ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... referred to an interesting article which we have copied from the Cincinnati Republican—a paper which lately supported the principles of Democracy; a paper which has turned, but not quite far enough to act with the Adamses and Slades in Congress, or the Whig abolitionists of Ohio. It does not, however, give a correct view of the strength of the ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... of election, the only true one, a principle recognized and asserted as well by antiquity as by the primitive Church, recognized by rationalists, by Fourier, by radical, or any democracy whatever—that principle must undergo an immense improvement before it shall act in all its perfection. The elector must be altogether self-governing, and not governed or influenced by anybody in his choice and vote. The elector himself ...
— Diary from November 12, 1862, to October 18, 1863 • Adam Gurowski
... I, paying no attention to his guying. "'Everywhere the voice is that of Democracy, but the hand and the checkbook are those of a respectable Autocracy.' Isn't that so? Why, when I had ploughed through a stack of those magazines" (and I pointed to our parlor table and its load of ten-cent literature) "I burned two fillings ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... in a blaze of autumnal sunshine, which glorified much military and civic pomp, the reception of the new Emperor. Mrs Browning's handkerchief waved frantically while she prayed that God might bless the people in this the chosen representative of a democracy. What were Browning's thoughts on that memorable Saturday is not recorded, but we may be sure that they were less enthusiastic. Yet he enjoyed the stir and animation of Paris, and after the palpitating life of the boulevards found Florence dull and dead—no change, no variety. The journey ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... the emigrants, themselves, were the almost dominant type on the streets downtown. That type was the emigrant's prosperous offspring: descendant of the emigrations of the Seventies and Eighties and Nineties, those great folk-journeyings in search not so directly of freedom and democracy as of more money for the same labour. A new Midlander—in fact, a new ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... the West. 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 ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... political power rather than for the religious welfare of their denomination. In alliance with them are the powerful Jewish financiers who also control the press in Vienna and Budapest. Clearly Austria is the very negation of democracy. It stands for reaction, autocracy, falsehood and hypocrisy, and it is therefore no exaggeration to say that nobody professing democratic views can reasonably plead for the preservation of this system ...
— Independent Bohemia • Vladimir Nosek
... organization of this ferocious people; their confederacy of five nations, bound together by a peculiar tie of clanship; their chiefs, half hereditary, half elective; their government, an oligarchy in form and a democracy in spirit; their minds, thoroughly savage, yet marked here and there with traits of a vigorous development. The war which they had long waged with the Hurons was carried on by the Senecas and the other Western nations of their league; while the conduct of hostilities against ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... chance to prevail; and as they prevail, the balance is overset, now upon one side, now upon the other. The government is, one day, arbitrary power in a single person; another, a juggling confederacy of a few to cheat the prince and enslave the people; and the third, a frantic and unmanageable democracy. The great instrument of all these changes, and what infuses a peculiar venom into all of them, is party. It is of no consequence what the principles of any party, or what their pretensions are; the spirit which actuates all parties ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... express the exact state of your desires somewhat in this way: "Here is my moral dollar. I think I will take a quarter's worth of Socialism, and twelve and a half cents' worth of old-time Republicanism, and twelve and a half cents of genuine Jeffersonian democracy, if there is any left, and a quarter's worth of miscellaneous insurgency. Let me see, I have a quarter left. Perhaps I may drop in to-morrow and see if you have ...
— Humanly Speaking • Samuel McChord Crothers
... Serbian officials opposing Kosovo independence; the international community has agreed to begin a process to determine final status only after significant progress has been made in solidifying multi-ethnic democracy in Kosovo as outlined in the policy of "standards before status"; the Contact group (including the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia) will review progress on the UNMIK standard around mid-2005; ethnic Albanians in Kosovo resist demarcation ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... haunting fears than of spontaneous exultation or mirth; and their drunkenness seemed but a garment, thrown over the head to shut out the approaching spectre of Roman retribution. All Capua presented to her the spectacular results of a turbulent democracy exalted to power; for the vagaries of the Roman plebeians seemed as nothing beside the unbridled insolence of this populace. Here was Pacuvius Calavius, who had triumphed by their aid over a senate more than half in sympathy with Rome; and now, recognizing his litter, ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... 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 ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... 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 from its ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... can't help growing up," said Rupert, "and—well, democracy is all right and that sort of thing, but you must drift into your class you know. There's Annette, for instance. She is a factory hand, a fine girl of ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... 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
... the thing is impossible in England, who would venture to say? Every one who can think at all sees how slight are our safeguards against that barbaric force in man which the privileged races have so slowly and painfully brought into check. Democracy is full of menace to all the finer hopes of civilization, and the revival, in not unnatural companionship with it, of monarchic power based on militarism, makes the prospect dubious enough. There has but to arise some Lord of Slaughter, and the ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... when the approach of the Revolution was felt everywhere, and the proletarians were beginning to plant the banner of Socialism on the barricades, that faith in the people began to enter once more the hearts of the social schemers: faith, on the one side, in Republican Democracy, and on the other side in free association, in the organizing powers of the ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... predicted dismemberment of our Union, proclaimed death to democracy, and those thoughtless Americans who believe that liberty cannot survive the destruction of our Republic, think well of what great men have written. Though North America were submerged to-morrow, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans rushing over our buried hopes to a riotous ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... being dead, as well as all the societies and interests that they represent, they do not excite the prejudices and passions of modern life. This, however, may need some qualification. Grote wrote his history of Greece to counterwork the party bias of Mitford. The battles of despotism, oligarchy, and democracy are to this hour fought over the dead bodies of Greece and Rome. If the professor meant to insinuate, that those that have gone through the classical training are less violent as partisans, more dispassionate in political judgments, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... they really exist; our author has a faith only in the future of this class. He does not fail to give vent, when the occasion prompts him, to his compassion or contempt for the ignorant mass of mankind. The democracy he worships is one to be established in some distant age, by a people very different, and living under some modification of the law of property, which he has not thought fit to explain. It is a democracy which has nothing distinct but its hatreds—a shadowy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... 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 when he who preaches ...
— Volume 2 • Anthony Trollope
... have very little central authority, and only a handful of officials. We have free speech, and even the Emperor can be freely criticized without fear. We have no conscription, and no one need carry a passport, as they have to in some countries. We are almost a democracy. We have no exclusive hereditary rank. Any one may become a mandarin if he learns enough to deserve it. We only wanted to be left alone without armies, and we did not want to buy guns and ships. ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... Pictures of Travel breathe the spirit of the Young German propaganda—the celebrated confession of faith, for example, in the Journey to the Hartz, in which he declares himself a knight of the holy spirit of iconoclastic democracy. In Paris he actively enlisted in the cause, and for about fifteen years continued, as a journalist, the kind of expository and polemic writing that he had developed in the later volumes of the Pictures of Travel. Regarding himself, like many an expatriate, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... nation is a curious instance of the growing consciousness of Americanism which was more rampant in Webster than in any of his contemporaries. The passages which I have been quoting intimate the deference which Webster displayed toward the people. He was one of the first to carry a spirit of democracy into letters. Intense Federalist as he was, his Federalism agreed with a stout anti-aristocratic spirit; and throughout his work one may detect a confidence in the common sense of the people which was as firm as Franklin's, ...
— Noah Webster - American Men of Letters • Horace E. Scudder
... fastidious ears. 'The day will come,' said Mazzini in after-years, 'when the democracy will acknowledge its debt to Byron;' but the demos is notoriously ungrateful, and the subject races have now won their independence. The shadow of discouragement and weariness which passed over sensitive minds at the beginning of this century, a period of political ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... embarrassing we ever had to execute. I did not expect a crop of so sudden and rank growth of fraud, and open opposition by force, could have grown up within the United States."[242] Apostle of pure democracy as he was, he had forgotten to reckon with the people, and had mistaken the convictions of himself and a coterie for national sentiment. From all parts of the country men began silently and covertly to undermine the working of the system. ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 1 • Alfred Thayer Mahan
... new union of States tried to eliminate military forces altogether. There was vast confusion of thought as to what freedom required for its own survival. Thomas Jefferson, one of the great architects of democracy, and still renowned for his "isolationist" sentiments, wrote the warning: "We must train and classify the whole of our male citizens, and make military instruction a regular part of collegiate education. We can never be ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... that if I would write a pamphlet he would pay for the printing of 1,000 copies, to be sent to all the members of Parliament and other leading people in city and country. I called my pamphlet "A Plea for Pure Democracy," and when writing it I felt the democratic strength of the position as I had not felt it in reading Hare's own book. It cost my brother 15 pounds, ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... had just been baptized as a new State. And it was still an unsolved problem whether or not the United States could be kept united, whether or not it could be built into an organic nation without losing the spirit of self-help and democracy. ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... the call; ev'ry man is proud He is in the common cause, with a bunch of men Fighting for democracy, lined up with this crowd— God! It's pretty nifty just to ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... on the election of Van Buren to the presidency, he was appointed First Controller of the Treasury, and moved to Washington. From that time on, he was connected with the highest offices in the department. His pen was continually dedicated to the support of Democracy, and, during the years from 1832-1836, he figured as a contributor to many papers of the time on political topics. He lived until March ...
— The Indian Princess - La Belle Sauvage • James Nelson Barker
... B. ANTHONY: This resolution brings in no question, no ism. It merely makes the assertion that in a true democracy, in a genuine republic, every citizen who lives under the government must have the right of representation. You remember the maxim, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." This is the fundamental principle ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... gold; the mouths of car-conductors move slowly, slowly, with an oblique oval motion, for they are chewing; pavements are 'sidewalks.' It is all true.... But there were other things one expected, though in no precise form. What, for instance, would it be like, the feeling of whatever democracy ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... his degree in 1826; traveled in Italy and Sicily; in 1831 visited the United States under a commission to study the penitentiary system; returning published a book on the subject which was crowned by the French Academy; from private notes taken in America then wrote his masterpiece, "Democracy in America," which secured his election to the Academy in 1841; spent some years in public life and then retired in order ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VIII (of X) - Continental Europe II. • Various
... Emperor during the whole of his public career, and powerful agencies were constantly proclaiming against him and his methods. His advent had brought with it a new form of democracy, which cast down oligarchies and despotisms everywhere. His system destroyed and affected too many interests not to leave behind it feelings of revenge, but this revenge did not exist among the common people. Those who persecuted the common people felt his heavy hand upon them. The populace ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... my father's) quite as much for a warning as for an example. I am not sure whether it was in this winter or the next that I first read a history of the French Revolution. I learnt with astonishment that the principles of democracy, then apparently in so insignificant and hopeless a minority everywhere in Europe, had borne all before them in France thirty years earlier, and had been the creed of the nation. As may be supposed from this, I had previously a very vague idea of that great commotion. I knew only that the French ...
— Autobiography • John Stuart Mill
... forget that, as we have already stated, the Tory party was nearly destroyed by the passing of the Reform Bill; that from its ashes rose the CONSERVATIVE party, adapted to the totally new political exigencies of the times; its grand object being, as it were, out of the elements of democracy to arrest the progress of democracy. The bond of its union was correctly described by its founder, as consisting in attachment to the fundamental institutions of the country—non-opposition to rational changes rendered requisite by the altered circumstances of the times—but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... like men of noble breed; And when the battle fell away at night By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust Obscurely in a common grave with him The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust. Now limb doth mingle with dissolved limb In nature's busy old democracy To flush the mountain laurel when she blows Sweet by the southern sea, And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:— The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew This mountain fortress for no earthly ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... the land. Thus at bottom Russia is a field sown thick with little communistic republics, though at top it is a despotism. The government of Novgorod doubtless grew out of that of the village. The republican city has long since passed away, but the seed of democracy remains planted deeply ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... gain its end. No craft is above that Government. It resorts to frightfulness, terrorism. It resorts to bribery, in the shape of titles, honour and high offices. It administers opiates in the shape of Reforms. In essence then it is an autocracy double distilled in the guise of democracy. The greatest gift of a crafty cunning man are worthless so long as cunning resides in his heart. It is a Government representing a civilisation which is purely material and godless. I have given to you these qualities of this government in order not to excite your angry passions, but in ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... and letters in each Occidental nation from their home-plowed channels; because Protestant theologians and Spanish Jesuits impeded that self-evolution of the reason which Italian humanists inaugurated. No less futile were it to waste declamatory tears upon the strife of absolutism with new-fledged democracy, or to vaticinate a reign of socialistic terror for the immediate future. We have to recognize that man cannot be other than what he makes himself; and he makes himself in obedience to immutable although unwritten ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... instructive. This second subject is, The History of the Republic of Florence under the House of Medicis: a period of one hundred and fifty years, which rises or descends from the dregs of the Florentine democracy, to the title and dominion of Cosmo de Medicis in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. I might deduce a chain of revolutions not unworthy of the pen of Vertot; singular men, and singular events; the Medicis four times expelled, and as often recalled; and the Genius of Freedom reluctantly yielding ...
— Memoirs of My Life and Writings • Edward Gibbon
... witnesses against feudal caste. With them was neither high-born nor low-born, rich nor poor: worth was their only test; the meanest serf entering there might become the lord of knights and vassals, the counsellor of kings and princes. Men may talk of democracy—those old monasteries were the most democratic institutions the world had ever till then seen. 'A man's a man for a' that,' was not only talked of in them, but carried out in practice—only not in anarchy, and as a cloak for licentiousness: but under ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... involved in the course they were pursuing. Surround the President with Ministers of State and "the President will be induced to place more confidence in them than in the Senate.... An oligarchy will be confirmed upon the ruin of the democracy; a government most hateful will descend to our posterity and all our exertions in the glorious cause ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford
... and the distribution of wealth, the development of mechanical skill and the increase of production—these are the things that we must study. I say they are the only things that will count for success in the new democracy." ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... ignored. I spoke of the doom of swift rebellions, but I doubt even if any soever gradual evolution will lead us astray from the general precepts of Mr. Brummell's code. At every step in the progress of democracy those precepts will be strengthened. Every day their fashion is more secure, corroborate. They are acknowledged by the world. The barbarous costumes that in bygone days were designed by class-hatred, or hatred of race, are dying, very surely dying. The costermonger with his ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... 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 organization, ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... of the last representatives of the old order that troubled Europe so much in its going, for to John, a keen and intense lover of freedom and of the career open to all the talents, the present war was in its main feature a death struggle between autocracy and democracy. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... subjects. Hence Napoleon the First sprinkled the symbolic bees over the imperial mantle that bore the arms of his dynasty; and in the country of the Pharaohs the bee was used as the emblem of a people sweetly submissive to the orders of its king. But the fact is, a swarm of bees is an absolute democracy, and kings and despots can find no warrant in their example. The power and authority are entirely vested in the great mass, the workers. They furnish all the brains and foresight of the colony, and administer its affairs. Their word is law, and both king and queen must obey. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... The War and Democracy, because our guiding idea throughout has been the sense of the great new responsibilities, both of thought and action, which the present situation lays upon British Democracy and on believers in democracy throughout ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... much for granted. He had taken for granted that he lived in a democracy—that the Civil War had once for all made America a free nation—a nation of opportunity, riches, and happiness for all. Not so. Literally millions were living in abject poverty, slaves to their pay-envelopes; to lose a job meant to lose everything, there ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... are these various spheres of action, an even wider international contact of thought and feeling is springing up in our days. Democracy, science, and universal education are producing everywhere similarity of institutions, of industry, of the whole organization of life. Similarity of life will breed community of interests, and from this arises real converse—more give and take in the things that matter, less purely superficial ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... the entire globe are leagued in self-protective unison "to make the world safe for democracy;" but Demos dies, by violence and disease, ere yet salvation comes. It appeals to its old-time standards for relief,—they are gone; to its pastors—they are mute; to its masters—they are impotent; ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... form: none conventional short form: Jamaica Digraph: JM Type: parliamentary democracy Capital: Kingston Administrative divisions: 14 parishes; Clarendon, Hanover, Kingston, Manchester, Portland, Saint Andrew, Saint Ann, Saint Catherine, Saint Elizabeth, Saint James, Saint Mary, Saint Thomas, Trelawny, Westmoreland Independence: 6 August 1962 (from ...
— The 1993 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... you to a superior. They saw in this custom an 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
... TWEED, in presenting a cane to him the other evening, desired to show the Young Democracy how many there ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various
... pleasure of his society, my intimacy with Long Ghost was of great service to me in other respects. His disgrace in the cabin only confirmed the good-will of the democracy in the forecastle; and they not only treated him in the most friendly manner, but looked up to him with the utmost deference, besides laughing heartily at all his jokes. As his chosen associate, this feeling for him extended to me, and gradually we came to be regarded in the light of distinguished ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... Royalist though she had been in her sympathies, she felt the justice of the people's cause. She had seen the suffering of the peasantry, the brutality of the tax-gatherers, and all the oppression of the old regime. But what she hoped for was a democracy of order and equality and peace. Could the king reign as a constitutional monarch rather than as a despot, this was ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... pinafores and curtsies and eloquent goodwill. With what a sweet politeness do they invest their service, some of these soft-voiced British maids! Their kindness almost moves one to tears when one is fresh from the resentful civility fostered by Democracy. ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... steadfastly. "The day of democracy is past," he said. "Past for ever. That day began with the bowmen of Crecy, it ended when marching infantry, when common men in masses ceased to win the battles of the world, when costly cannon, great ironclads, and ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... subject were known to all men before you nominated me first in Chicago, four years ago. I said then that I believed there is a sharp physical difference between the white and black races, and I have always linked colonization with freedom. The Negro cannot remain in a free democracy unless we absorb him into our social and political life. Therefore, we must colonize him. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to future generations—above all, we owe it to the Negro himself. He was brought here by cruel force. At our own expense, therefore, we ...
— A Man of the People - A Drama of Abraham Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... Ionians, on the contrary, were susceptible, flexile, and more characterized by the generosity of modern knighthood than the sternness of ancient heroism. Them, not the past, but the future, charmed. Ever eager to advance, they were impatient even of the good, from desire of the better. Once urged to democracy— democracy fixed their character, as oligarchy fixed the Spartan. For, to change is the ambition of a democracy—to conserve of an oligarchy. The taste, love, and intuition of the beautiful stamped ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... not a superficial, thing. It is the golden rule translated into terms of conduct. It is not a white-wash which, if laid on thick enough, will cover every defect. It is a clear varnish which shows the texture and grain of the wood beneath. In the ideal democracy the ideal citizen is the man who is not only incapable of doing an ungallant or an ungracious thing, but is equally incapable of doing an unmanly one. There is no use lamenting the spacious days of long ago. Wishing for them will not bring them back. ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... lyrics by finally placing at the very beginning the Cavalier Tunes and The Lost Leader; for the former voice in eloquent language the hatred of democratic ideas, and the latter, in language equally strenuous, is a glorification of democracy. Imagine Browning himself saying what he places in the mouth of his gallant cavaliers— "Hampden to hell!" In the second, The Lost Leader, nothing was farther from Browning's own feelings than a personal attack on Wordsworth, whom he ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... sociologist, in which the case was presented without any attempt at sophistication. It was a fact, needing no attestation, that the mass of mankind had always lived in a state of slavery. At the present hour, under the forms of democracy, there were a quarter of a million men killed every year in industry, and half a million women living by prostitution, and two million children earning wages, and ten million people in want; and in comparison with ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... 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 ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... 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 popish ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... wooing back the rebels, over one-half of them yielded, and gave that consent which neither danger nor suffering had been able to force from them! Thus were over twenty recruits from one room of one prison, obtained for the rebel army by the triumphs of Northern Democracy! ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... lay in his talent for music that was suited to the spirit of the common people, recently raised to sovereignty, and the young democracy. In spite of his aristocratic disdain, his soul was with the masses. M. Hippeau applies to him Taine's definition of a romantic artist: "the plebeian of a new race, richly gifted, and filled with aspirations, ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... agree with you, 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 ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith
... life that seems to speak the more eloquently for the beneficence and the triumph of his life's work. No funeral could have been less ostentatious, yet none could have been more impressive in the multitude that overflowed the church, or more conformable to his tenacious belief in the democracy of man. People of eminence, of wealth, of fashion, were there, but they were swallowed up in the great congregation of those to whom we are bound by the ties of humanity and universal brotherhood, whose tears ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... as the "armed apostle of democracy" that Napoleon went forth conquering and to conquer. He declared at St. Helena that he "had always marched supported by the opinions of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... among his nobles and gentry. One rash reformer suggested that monastic lands should be devoted to educational purposes;[957] had that plan been followed, education in England would have been more magnificently endowed than in any other country of the world, and England might have become a democracy in the seventeenth century. From this point of view Henry spoilt one of the greatest opportunities in English history; from another, he saved England from a most serious danger. Had the Crown retained the wealth of the monasteries, the Stuarts might have made themselves independent ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... when among his cattle and poultry was he moved to draw contrasts between the security of his possessions in the country and the insecurity of his possessions in town. "What I am thinking of is the city tax-payer. Urban democracy, working on a large scale, has declared itself finally, and what we have is the organization of the careless, the ignorant, the envious, brought about by the criminal and the semi-criminal, for the spoliation of ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... first to his own exaltation; and, secondly, to the cause of absolutism, with which he sympathized with all the intensity that a proud and domineering spirit may be supposed to feel for the struggles of inexperienced democracy. Like the English statesman, the German general was a Jesuit in the use of tools, jealous of his authority, liberal in his rewards, and fearful in his vengeance. Though greedy of admiration and fond of display, he surrounded ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... is impossible financially," said Father Payne. "Apart from love and children, marriage is a small joint-stock company for cheap comfort. But it is of no use to go vapouring on about these big schemes, because in a democracy people won't do what philosophers wish, but what they want. Let's take a notorious case, known to everyone. Can anyone say what practical advice he could have given to either Carlyle or to Mrs. Carlyle, which would have improved that witches' cauldron? There were two high-principled ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... independent and independence-loving landowners, for a lack of which no growth of cities can compensate. Our farmers have been our mainstay in times of crisis, and in future it must still largely be upon their stability and common sense that this democracy must rely to conserve ...
— State of the Union Addresses of William H. Taft • William H. Taft
... way of injuries inflicted. The first ruled for, or more properly speaking against, the barons, and the barons only existed to brave the power of the kings, or to trample with their iron heels upon the neck of prostrate democracy. The latter had no friend but the clergy, and these, though they necessarily instilled the superstition from which they themselves were not exempt, yet taught the cheering doctrine that all men were equal in the sight of heaven. Thus, while Feudalism told them they had no ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... to Hopkins as Squeaks retired. The Chair nodded, rose and explained. "In drawing up our constitution, we deemed it best, in the interests of democracy, to do all voting by ballot ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... we are fighting, that claim to predominancy of a civilization, a material one, a hard one, a civilization which if once it rules and sways the world, liberty goes, democracy vanishes, and unless Britain comes to the rescue, and her sons, it will be a dark day for humanity. We are not fighting the German people. The German people are just as much under the heel of this Prussian military caste, and more so, thank God, than any other nation in Europe. It ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... have nothing green here but the Archduke Max, who firmly believes that he is going forth to Mexico to establish an American empire, and that it is his divine mission to destroy the dragon of democracy and reestablish the true Church, the Right Divine, and all sorts of games. Poor ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Liberal party," exclaimed Waldershare. "There is more true democracy in the Roman Catholic Church than in all the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... you know you are wronging 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
... rule of the Many, that is, of the whole community. Democracy, again, is either direct (commonly called pure) or representative. The most famous approach in history to pure democracy is the government of Athens, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... their own degeneracy. While claiming to be equal among themselves they were making themselves slaves; and though at present the government so entirely bore the stamp of their own will that they might fancy they enjoyed a democracy, yet history teaches us that the simple paternal form of government never fails to become sooner or later a cruel tyranny. The building of Alexandria must be held the master-stroke of policy by which Egypt was kept ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... 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
... republic, the cherishing fathers of their country, who, denying commerce to themselves, made it flourish in a manner unexampled under their protection? Could Keppel have borne that a vile faction should totally destroy this harmonious construction, in favor of a robbing democracy founded on the spurious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Democratic party measures. The Whigs of the South were therefore driven precipitately to division. Those of extreme pro-slavery views, like Dixon, of Kentucky,—who, when he introduced his amendment, declared, "Upon the question of slavery I know no Whiggery and no Democracy,"—went boldly and at once over into the Democratic camp, while those who retained their traditional party name and flag were sundered from their ancient allies in the Northern States by the impossibility of taking up ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... was far different, for there property and the Established Church found themselves ranged side by side in the maintenance of their respective privileges against the democracy, which, as it happened, was Catholic, and which for many years after the Union did not recover from the long and demoralising persecution of ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell
... attack it, on whatsoever plea, a Welf. Frederick, having established his power in Germany, attempted to assert it in Italy as well; and so the strife passed over the Alps and became that of Ghibelline against Guelf, in Italian phrase, of emperor against pope, of monarchy against democracy. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various
... when political strife was running high, Adams said, "Washington appointed a multitude of democrats and jacobins of the deepest die. I have been more cautious in this respect; but there is danger of proscribing under imputations of democracy, some of the ablest, most influential, and best characters in the Union." In this he was quite correct, for the first President's appointments were made with a view to destroy party and not create it, his object ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... story. They were expert railroad troops, picked out of civilian life and packed off to England without any pretence at military training. When they were informed that they were to be the leading feature in a London procession, many of them even lacked uniforms. With true American democracy of spirit, the officers stripped their rank-badges from their spare tunics and lent them to the privates, who otherwise ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... reform the present who understand the past, and it is perhaps the spirit of the Merton Library, at once old and new, which has inspired the statesmen whom Merton has sent to take part in the government of Britain during the last half-century. Lord Randolph Churchill, the founder of Tory democracy, his present-day successor in the same role, Lord Birkenhead, and the ever young Lord Halsbury are men of the type which Walter de Merton wished to train, "for the service of God in Church and State," men who champion the existing order, ...
— The Charm of Oxford • J. Wells
... Tisdale, niece of Mrs. 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 ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... in the moment of victory as did Nelson, it would have been happier for his fame. But it must not be forgotten that the years of his political action were those in which England was passing through the stages of a social and political revolution, in which the democracy was rising to power and the landed aristocracy was losing prestige and privilege. That this revolution was accomplished without such a convulsion as marked this struggle in other European kingdoms may have been due, in some degree at least, to the fact ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... of the country is an arbitrary democracy; having no common law, and no judiciary. Their only laws are made and unmade at the caprice of the legislature, and are as variable as the legislature itself. They pass through the form of sending representatives to the congress at Mexico, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and humourless democracy detected in him no taint of the patronizing or supercilious, and if he was new to the backwoods, he paid his arrears of knowledge with the ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... exhortations. She was more successful with the Flemings, then in revolt against their Count, Louis of Nevers. Twelve notables of Bruges, headed by the burgomaster, William de Deken, visited England and offered to recognise Edward as King of France if he would support the Flemish democracy against their feudal lord.[1] But Philip VI.'s first act was to unite with the Count of Flanders, and the fatal day of Cassel laid low the fortunes of Bruges and restored the fugitive Louis to power. Isabella was forced to resign ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... return for a second term. She had made no friends among the girls, although, no doubt, having won their respect, they would, with the democracy of childhood, have admitted her to intimacy by degrees, particularly if she had proved to ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... The conditions of labor were deplorable before the Reform Bill was passed and they continued to be so for some time afterwards. A merely political change, therefore, was not all that was wanted, and it was necessary to carry democracy into a social sphere in order to improve the condition of the poorer classes. The term "Socialism," therefore, was chosen to describe a play of forces that would act in this way on society itself, and was an excellent term for ...
— Social Justice Without Socialism • John Bates Clark
... time of universal democracy, a provision was made on many of the privateers for the young men of family who desired to follow the calling. They were called "gentlemen sailors," and, in consideration of their social standing and the fact that they were trained to arms, ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... despotism, and Australia and New Zealand have their foreign relations controlled and protected by the mother country. Hitherto the experiment of a really democratic government has never been tried on this planet, except since 1909 in Norway, and even there with some limitations; and though democracy might possibly avert the necessity of rebellion, I rather doubt whether it can be called advantageous to any State to accord to its members the right of revolt. The State that allows revolt—that takes no ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... and on a second's reflection realized that I had been talking Democracy several minutes, and had said several things that I couldn't take back. I became flustered, and hesitated and stumbled more or less till I heard the lawyer ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... underlying, unexpressed, and immanent theory that this country can best be managed by an aristocracy, a chosen few, working under the guise of democracy?" ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... intellect the knowledge, her nature was quick to grasp. For kingdoms may be overthrown, declarations of independence be declared, legislatures legislate equality, and still—up to this time, at least—the children of democracy be educated, in free common schools, upon much the same plan that had been adopted by some Hannah More in bygone centuries for the only class that then was educated, daughters of the gentry, young ladies who aspired to be countesses, ...
— Pirate Gold • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... the mutual intercourse and common discipline through which the Western communities were developed, was cut off from association with its more fortunate kindred and subjected to influences from which they were, for the most part, exempt. To hold up the crude democracy and turbulent assemblies common in a primitive state of society as evidence that the Russian people possessed at an early period of its history a beautifully organized constitutional system; to contend that the most absolute monarchy in existence ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... him the confidence and support of three-fourths of the slave-holding States, without losing his hold upon the Democracy of the free States. Indeed, there was nothing new that the Whigs could oppose to Van Buren. They were not ready to take the anti-slavery side of the issue, and questions growing out of the bank controversy had practically been settled in 1832. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... community naturally in them, may employ all that power in making laws for the community from time to time, and executing those laws by officers of their own appointing; and then the form of the government is a perfect democracy: or else may put the power of making laws into the hands of a few select men, and their heirs or successors; and then it is an oligarchy: or else into the hands of one man, and then it is a monarchy: if to him and his heirs, it is an hereditary monarchy: if to him ...
— Two Treatises of Government • John Locke
... first broke through the jealous policy of the Spanish crown, touching those colonies; and, if space permitted, it might be distinctly shown how from those whalemen at last eventuated the liberation of Peru, Chili, and Bolivia from the yoke of Old Spain, and the establishment of the eternal democracy in those parts. That great America on the other side of the sphere, Australia, was given to the enlightened world by the whaleman. After its first blunder-born discovery by a Dutchman, all other ships long shunned those shores as pestiferously ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... next election a change took place, profoundly affecting the Democratic party, and, as a consequence, the country. Hitherto the position of the Northern Democracy had been that of Jefferson, that slavery was altogether evil; and Cass, the Democratic candidate, still expressed his prayer for the final doom of slavery. Against his election a third party was formed; and Van ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... talks well. If the mental element is also strong he can become a good public speaker for he will then have all the qualifications—a powerful voice, human sympathy, democracy and simplicity. ...
— How to Analyze People on Sight - Through the Science of Human Analysis: The Five Human Types • Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict
... primitive Nature, vulcanic and plutonic forces struggled together in the face of heaven and hell to form the earth. The long ranges of history have left with us one definite idea: it is that of progress, the intellectual passion of our time. All our science demonstrates it, all our poetry sings it. Democracy is the last term of political progress. Popular intelligence and virtue are the conditions of democracy. To produce these is the mission of periodical literature. The vast complexities of the world, all knowledge and all purpose, are being reduced in the crucible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... not here concern 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 power was ...
— A Short History of Greek Philosophy • John Marshall
... always feel in his presence as one does when standing on the bow of an ocean liner, with the salt breeze whizzing into your heart. He is a force of nature, yet he explains nothing: a thorough man of the world; droll, sarcastic, generous and I believe for democracy he is unequaled by any Tammany politician: he knows more policemen, dopes, conductors, beggars, chauffeurs, gangsters, bartenders, jobless actors, painters, preachers, anarchists, and all the rest of New York's flotsam and jetsam than any one in the world. He is always the polished gentleman, ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... Orleans is the way homes of all ranks, in so many sections of it, are mingled. The easy, bright democracy of the thing is what one might fancy of ancient Greeks; only, here there is a general ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... answer these questions unless we have chosen our end in life and are morally satisfied with it. In the history of modern states we discover a tendency, more strongly marked in some quarters than in others, towards that form of democracy which is called responsible self-government. Government of the people, for the people, by the people. The people are going to govern themselves. But they may do so in a thousand different ways—each of which has a different moral value. A people may go wrong just as fatally ...
— Progress and History • Various
... did not mean a heterogeneous monarchy, would make the lot of the masses far easier than it is to-day. The fifteen million Irish plebeians with which the country is cursed would be harmlessly raising pigs in the country. Hamilton, in one of his letters, speaks of democracy as a poison. Some twenty years ago an eminent Englishman bottled and labelled the poison in its infinite variety, as a warning to the extreme liberals in his own country. We attempted one ideal, and we almost have forgotten ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... and yet indicative of the depth beneath. It seems to me that there is no more interesting and useful book on the French Revolution than this autobiography. It ought to be placed near De Tocqueville's "Ancient R['e]gime" and "Democracy in America." ...
— Confessions of a Book-Lover • Maurice Francis Egan
... Miss Berry, Aug. 17.-Spirit of democracy in Switzerland. Peace with Russia. M. de Bouill'e's bravado. Sir William Hamilton's pantomime wife. Antique ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... noisy, 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 ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... [Footnote: Three articles by F.J. Turner, viz.: "Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1893, 199-227; "Problem of the West," in "Atlantic Monthly, LXXVIII, 289; "Contributions of the West to American Democracy, ibid, XCI., 83.] There had been a west even in early colonial days; but then it lay close to the coast. By the middle of the eighteenth century the west was to be found beyond tide-water, advancing towards the Allegheny Mountains. ...
— Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 - Volume 14 in the series American Nation: A History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... to realize them, and to what extent they succeeded. It is only in this way that we become capable of passing judgment, as citizens, on what is proposed by political and social reformers, and thus justify and guarantee our existence as a democracy. ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education
... rights or welfare as a republican form of government with its checks and balances and constitutional restrictions. The excesses of the unlimited democracies of ancient Greece and of the unrestrained democracy of France during and after the revolution of 1789 and the lynchings in this country do not contribute ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... still live in the Ages of Superstition. Just because fascism and communism were once forced on reluctant populations, you think this holds true for all time. Go back to your books. In exactly the same era democracy and self-government were adapted by former colonial states, like India and the Union of North Africa, and the only violence was between local religious groups. Change is the lifeblood of mankind. Everything we today accept as normal was at one time an innovation. ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... beginning life As a water carrier to the section hands, Then becoming a section hand when he was grown, Afterwards foreman of the gang, until he rose To the superintendency of the railroad, Living in Chicago, Was a veritable slave driver, Grinding the faces of labor, And a bitter enemy of democracy. And I say to you, Spoon River, And to you, O republic, Beware of the man who rises ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Patrick MacGill, the peasant or artisan plays which have been produced at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, and the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, may well be the beginning of a great democratic literary movement. Democracy, in its striving after a richer and fuller life for the people of England, is at last turning its attention to literature and art. It is slowly realising two great truths. The first is that literature may be used as a mighty weapon in the furtherance ...
— Songs of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... clever enough to find out whether it was with a patronizing spirit or not. The extreme freedom which she took with our houses, almost seeming to consider them as her own, living in them some days from dawn till late at night, might have indicated either patronage or the utmost democracy. We missed her auburn-wigged head appearing in our doorways at all hours, and there was a feeling all over the village as if company ...
— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman |
