Cynical
Goodies

Cynical Definitions

n. A device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

n. The recurrent yet incorrect suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.

n. Choosing your dictators, after they've told you what you think it is you want to hear.

n. Two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

n. Election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

n. Organized mob rule.

n. The process by which people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

n. Raising the proletarian to the level of stupidity attained by the bourgeois.

Cynical Quotations

Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable.

— Shimon Peres

The difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that in a democracy you vote first and take orders later; in a dictatorship you don't have to waste your time voting.

— Charles Bukowski

Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.

— Clive Barnes

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.

— P.J. O'Rourke

Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule - and both commonly succeed, and are right.

— H.L. Mencken

The great thing about democracy is that it gives every voter a chance to do something stupid.

— Art Spander

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election.

— Bill Vaughan

Democracy is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

— H.L. Mencken

Democracy is... government by orgy, almost by orgasm. Its processes are most beautifully displayed at times when they stand most naked -- for example, in war days.

— H.L. Mencken

Democracy is "representative" in roughly the same sense that the Roman Empire was "Holly".

— William Ferraiolo

In democracy, stupidity always holds the majority in every chamber of government. It is, after all, a representative system.

— William Ferraiolo

Democracy is the name we give the people whenever we need them.

— Marquis de Flers Robert and Arman de Caillavet