Churchill on democracy?

[michael lepore]

The one about democracy being the worst form of govt, except for
all the others. Can someone give the exact words and also
the original source? (Publisher, date, and all that stuff)

Thank you for your assistance.

[Richard Schuerger]

In article <4mbsfc$7...@motss.newpaltz.edu> lepo...@matrix.newpaltz.edu (michael lepore) writes:
>The one about democracy being the worst form of govt, except for all the
> others. Can someone give the exact words and also>the original source?

I don't have the full ref, but the quote in my files is:

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the
others that have been tried.
- Winston Churchill

Here are a couple other intersting democracy quotes.

The best argument against democracy is a five minute talk with the
average voter.
- Winston Churchill

The whole dream of democracy is to raise the proletarian to the level of stupidity
attained by the bourgeois.
- Gustave Flaubert

A democracy is a government in the hands of men of low birth, no property, and
vulgar employments.
- Aristotle

In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and
bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the
Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred
years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
- Harry Lime to Holly Martins, 'The Third Man'

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and
deserve to get it good and hard.
- H.L. Mencken

Of course, I'm not arguing in favor of any other system... :)

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to
injustice makes democracy necessary.
- Reinhold Niebuhr

Richard Schuerger ~ Cha...@nwu.edu
Northwestern University, Department of Physiology
303 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago, IL 60611
Voice: (312)503-9810 FAX: (312)503-5101
http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~rjs979/plan.html

Today's Quote (#724)

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.
- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)