“Equal rights for all, special rights for none”.
Thomas Jefferson
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, followed always by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.”
—Alexander Fraser Tytler
This one is kind of close:
The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.
Alexis de Tocqueville
we’re not a democracy.
“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.” Thomas Jefferson ...
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.
It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury.
From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over lousy fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
The average of the world’s great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years.
These nations have progressed in this sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
from faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to Complacency;
from complacency to apathy;
from apathy to dependency;
from dependency back again to bondage.
Alexander Fraser Tyler, Cycle of Democracy (1770)
Rush Limbaugh paraphrased that before years ago, but I’m sure someone else could have said it before that.
democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
“Democracy in the truest sense of the word negates freedom because unlimited majority rule could (and most likely would) lead to the tyranny of the majority over the minority (i.e., 51% enslaving the other 49%). Freedom is protected by principles not by votes. Freedom means that individuals must not be physically coerced, not even by majority rule. Freedom means individual rights: life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, capitalism, [and] free traders, not masters and slaves.” —Greg Miller
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1944)
I know the quote you want, but I just can't find it at the moment...
You just did..
Alls I knows it that we’re perty derned close.
The ancient world demonstrated that pure Democracies will always break down into populism.
For that reason, political philosophers and historians concluded that a “mixed” government was best, like the Roman Republic, which had consuls, a senate, tribunes, and the people, providing checks and balances.
Our constitution likewise tries to provide checks and balances, between the branches of government and between the states and central government. But even that will break down eventually, because it depends on the basic honesty, morality, and good will of the people.
In the US, as Toqueville argued, it was religion, chiefly Christianity, that provided the moral and family values that made Democracy possible. Outlawing religion, as our activist judges are working hard to do, is a pretty good way to destroy the Republic.
Charlie Brown.
Point being that those on the dole (hence unwilling to join the military, and therefore not earn citizenship) had no incentive to get off the dole if by voting as a bloc they could continue to support/enrich themselves.
The nation goes belly-up when congress starts voting on their own pay raises. Something like that.
Let’s see. Here are the leading targets for miscellaneous attributions:
1. Albert Einstein
2. George Carlin
3. Yogi Berra
4. Ted Nugent
So it could be any one of these four.
< }B^)
I googled and came up with your post at the top. You said it.