Plato Quotes About Democracy
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Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.
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Is it not the excess and greed of this and the neglect of all other things that revolutionizes this constitution too and prepares the way for the necessity of a dictatorship?
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And a democracy, I suppose, comes into being when the poor, winning the victory, put to death some of the other party, drive out others, and grant the rest of the citizens an equal share in both citizenship and offices.
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The laws of democracy remain a dead letter, its freedom is anarchy, its equality the equality of unequals
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Freedom in a democracy is the glory of the state, and, therefore, in a democracy only will the freeman of nature deign to dwell.
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Democracy passes into despotism.
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And is it not true that in like manner a leader of the people who, getting control of a docile mob, does not withhold his hand from the shedding of tribal blood, but by the customary unjust accusations brings a citizen into court and assassinates him, blotting out a human life, and with unhallowed tongue and lips that have tasted kindred blood, banishes and slays and hints at the abolition of debts and the partition of lands.
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Democracy leads to anarchy, which is mob rule.
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Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.
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These, then, will be some of the features of democracy... it will be, in all likelihood, an agreeable, lawless, parti-colored commonwealth, dealing with all alike on a footing of equality, whether they be really equal or not.
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A democracy is a state in which the poor, gaining the upper hand, kill some and banish others, and then divide the offices among the remaining citizens equally, usually by lot.
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A delightful form of government, anarchic and motley, assigning a kind of equality indiscriminately to equals and unequals alike!
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In a democracy only will the freeman of nature design to dwell.
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Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.
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