Famous quotes containing the words national, assembly and/or election:
“The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner’s visit to Congress—these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous, and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.”
—James Madison (1751–1836)
“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)