“These various remedies, eugenic, educational, ethical, populist and socialist, all assume that either the voters are inherently competent to direct the course of affairs or that they are making progress towards such an ideal. I think [democracy] is a false ideal.”

Walter Lippmann

Walter Lippmann - “These various remedies, eugenic...” 1

Similar quotes

“The ideal of an “all-round” education is out of date; it has been destroyed by the progress of knowledge.”

Bertrand Russell
Read more

“Do not direct all your energies towards seeking pleasure but rather towards a sublime ideal. Your energies will then serve you and contribute to the realisation of your goal or ideal.”

Omraam Mikhael Aivanhov
Read more

“It is true that a man (a silly man) might make change itself his object or ideal. But as an ideal, change itself becomes unchangeable. If the change-worshipper wishes to estimate his own progress, he must be sternly loyal to the ideal of change; he must not begin to flirt gaily with the ideal of monotony. Progress itself cannot progress”

G.K. Chesterton
Read more

“Progress is the goal, the ideal is the type. What is this ideal? It is God. Ideal, absolute, perfection, infinity: identical words.”

Victor Hugo
Read more

“Please do not think that I am accusing socialists of insincerity or that I wish to hold them up to scorn either as bad democrats or as unprincipled schemers and opportunists. I fully believe, in spite of the childish Machiavellism in which some of their prophets indulge, that fundamentally most of them always have been as sincere in their professions as any other men. Besides, I do not believe in insincerity in social strife, for people always come to think what they want to think and what they incessantly profess. As regards democracy, socialist parties are presumably no more opportunists than are any others; they simply espouse democracy if, as, and when it serves their ideals and interests and not otherwise. Lest readers should be shocked and think so immoral a view worthy only of the most callous of political practitioners, ...”

Joseph A. Schumpeter
Read more