#2,981

The voter does not even vote for what he wants; he only votes for what he thinks he wants.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 476

#2,960

The modern world resulted from the confluence of three independent causal series: the demographic expansion, democratic propaganda, the industrial revolution.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 473

#2,958

A bureaucracy ultimately always ends up costing the people more than an upper class.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 472

#2,947

The reactionary’s ideal is not a paradisiacal society. It is a society similar to the society that existed in the peaceful intervals of the old European society, of Alteuropa, before the demographic, industrial, and democratic catastrophe.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 470

#2,943

There exist two interpretations of the popular vote, one democratic, the other liberal.
According to the democratic interpretation what the majority resolves upon is true; according to the liberal interpretation the majority merely chooses one option.
A dogmatic and absolutist interpretation, the one; a skeptical and discreet interpretation, the other.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 470

#2,932

After having been, in the last century, the instrument of political radicalism, universal suffrage is becoming, as Tocqueville foresaw, a conservative mechanism.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 468

#2,925

It is not in the hands of popular majorities where power is most easily perverted; it is in the hands of the semi-educated.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 467

#2,900

Monarchs, in almost every dynasty, have been so mediocre that they look like presidents.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 464

#2,782

To substitute a democratic government for another, non-democratic government comes down to substituting the beneficiaries of the pillaging.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 446

#2,746

When those elected in a popular election do not belong to the lowest intellectual, moral, social strata of the nation, we can be sure that clandestine anti-democratic mechanisms have interfered with the normal outcome of the vote.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 441

#2,728

Among those elected by popular suffrage only the imbeciles are respectable, because the intelligent man had to lie in order to be elected.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 438

#2,727

To know an historical episode well consists in not observing it through democratic prejudices.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 438

#2,681

They started out calling liberal institutions democratic, and they ended up calling democratic despotisms liberal.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 432

#2,577

The democrat changes his method in the social sciences when some conclusion makes him uncomfortable.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 417

#2,570

From behind the “will of all” the “general will” pokes its head out.
A “will” that is not volition, in reality, but a program. The program of a party.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 413

#2,538

Political parties, in democracies, have the function of enlisting citizens so that the political class can direct them as it pleases.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 408

#2,492

As long as they do not take him seriously, the man who says the truth can live for a while in a democracy.
Then, the hemlock.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 401

#2,488

In a hierarchical society imagination’s force is disciplined and does not unhinge the individual as it does in a democratic society.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 400

#2,401

The people never elects.
At most, it ratifies.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 387

#2,377

Among the vices of democracy one must count the impossibility of someone occupying an important position there without it being his ambition.

Escolios a un Texto Implícito: Selección, p. 384