You’re not human. You don’t care about truth or reality. Others do. This list is for them, not for you. You’ll ignore it. They won’t.

Democracy does not exist.

“Does not tyranny spring from democracy in the same manner as democracy from oligarchy?… Democracy has her own good, of which the insatiable desire brings her to dissolution. Freedom, which, as they tell you in a democracy, is the glory of the State–and that therefore in a democracy alone will the freeman of nature deign to dwell… The insatiable desire of this and the neglect of other things introduces the change in democracy, which occasions a demand for tyranny… When a democracy which is thirsting for freedom has evil cupbearers presiding over the feast, and has drunk too deeply of the strong wine of freedom… she calls them to account and punishes them, and says that they are cursed oligarchs… By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses, and ends by getting among the animals and infecting them. The father grows accustomed to descend to the level of his sons and to fear them, and the son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom, and [foreigner] is equal with the citizen and the citizen with the [foreigner], and the stranger is quite as good as either. And these are not the only evils–there are several lesser ones: In such a state of society the master fears and flatters his scholars, and the scholars despise their masters and tutors; young and old are all alike; and the young man is on a level with the old, and is ready to compete with him in word or deed; and old men condescend to the young and are full of pleasantry and gaiety; they are loth to be thought morose and authoritative, and therefore they adopt the manners of the young. The last extreme of popular liberty is when the slave bought with money, whether male or female, is just as free as his or her purchaser; nor must I forget to tell of the liberty and equality of the two sexes in relation to each other… And above all, I said, and as the result of all, see how sensitive the citizens become; they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority and at length, as you know, they cease to care even for the laws, written or unwritten; they will have no one over them. Such, my friend, I said, is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny. The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery. And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.” ~ Plato; The Republic, Book VIII; 360 BC

“For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Everyone thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill.” ~ Aristotle, Politics, book 2, part 3

“Nothing, therefore, is more important than that we should not, like sheep, follow the flock that has gone before us, and thus proceed not whither we ought, but whither the rest are going. Now nothing gets us into greater troubles than our subservience to common rumour, and our habit of thinking that those things are best which are most generally received as such, of taking many counterfeits for truly good things, and of living not by reason but by imitation of others. This is the cause of those great heaps into which men rush till they are piled one upon another. In a great crush of people, when the crowd presses upon itself, no one can fall without drawing someone else down upon him, and those who go before cause the destruction of those who follow them... We should be cured of this if we were to disengage ourselves from the herd; but as it is, the mob is ready to fight against reason in defence of its own mistake. Consequently the same thing happens as at elections, where, when the fickle breeze of popular favour has veered round, those who have been chosen consuls and praetors are viewed with admiration by the very men who made them so.” ~ Seneca; On the Happy Life, Part I; 58 AD

“Unjust government can be exercised by a great number, and it is then called a democracy: such is mob rule when the common folk take advantage of their numbers to oppress the rich. In such a case the entire community becomes a sort of tyrant.” ~ St. Thomas Aquinas; On Princely Government; Aquinas: Selected Political Writings; 1254

“There is no maxim in my opinion which is more liable to be misapplied, and which therefore more needs elucidation than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.” ~ James Madison; letter to James Monroe; October 5, 1786

“I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either… Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to say that democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than aristocracy or monarchy. It is not true, in fact, and no where appears in history. Those passions are the same in all men under all forms of simple government, and when unchecked, produce the same effects of fraud, violence, and cruelty. When clear prospects are opened before vanity, pride, avarice or ambition, for their easy gratification, it is hard for the most considerate philosophers and the most conscientious moralists to resist the temptation. Individuals have conquered themselves, nations and large bodies of men, never.” ~ John Adams; letter to John Taylor; December 17, 1814

“A popular government, without popular information, or the means or acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” ~ James Madison; letter to W. T. Barry; August 4, 1822

“Democracy is a falsehood. I do not know where it will end, but it cannot end in a quiet old age.” ~ Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, first State Chancellor of the Austrian Empire; 1836

“Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.” ~ George Bernard Shaw; Maxims

“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. ~ H. L. Mencken; A Little Book in C major, p. 19; 1916

“All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre—the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” ~ H.L. Mencken; Bayard vs. Lionheart; Baltimore Evening Sun; July 26, 1920

“That what is called democracy is always in fact plutocracy. The only alternative to the rule of the rich is to have a ruler who is deliberately made more powerful even than the rich. It is to have a ruler who is secure of his place, instead of rulers who are fighting for their place.” ~ G.K. Chesterton; The Revival of French Royalism; December 15, 1923

“The defect of democracy is its tendency to put mediocrity into power; and there is no way of avoiding this except by limiting office to men of ‘trained skill.’ Numbers by themselves cannot produce wisdom, and may give the best favors of office to the grossest flatterers. The fickle disposition of the multitude almost reduces those who have experience of it to despair; for it is governed solely by emotions, and not be reason. Thus democratic government becomes a procession of brief-lived demagogues, and men of worth are loath to enter lists where they must be judged and rated by their inferiors. Sooner or later the more capable men rebel against such a system, though they be in a minority. Hence I think it is that democracies change into aristocracies, and these at length into monarchies; people at last prefer tyranny to chaos.” ~ Will Durant; The Story of Philosophy, p. 214; 1926

“It is true that the masses have always been led in one manner or another, and it could be said that their part in history consists primarily in allowing themselves to be led, since they represent a merely passive element, a 'matter’ in the Aristotelian sense of the word. But, to lead them today, it is sufficient to dispose of purely material means, and this shows clearly to what depths our age has sunk. At the same time the masses are made to believe that they are not being led, but that they are acting spontaneously and governing themselves, and the fact that they believe this is a sign from which the extent of their stupidity may be inferred.” ~ René Guénon; The Crisis of the Modern World, pp. 127-8; 1927

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” ~ ✡Edward L. Bernays✡, father of modern advertising; Propaganda, pp. 9-10; 1928

“Democracy elects men totally lacking in scruples, without any morals; those who will pay better, thus those with a higher power of corruption; magicians, charlatans, demagogues, who will excel in their fields during the electoral campaign… Nothing frightens the jews more than a perfect unity in others: the unity of feeling in a movement, in a people. That is why they will always be for ‘democracy,’ which has but one advantage, and that one for the nation’s enemy. For democracy will break up the unity and spirit of a people.” ~ Corneliu Zelea Codreanu; For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard; 1936

“There are many national issues that concern individuals and groups so directly and unmistakably as to evoke volitions that are genuine and definite enough. The most important instance is afforded by issues involving immediate and personal pecuniary profit to individual voters and groups of voters, such as direct payments, protective duties, silver policies and so on. Experience that goes back to antiquity shows that by and large voters react promptly and rationally to any such chance. But the classical doctrine of democracy evidently stands to gain little from displays of rationality of this kind. Voters thereby prove themselves bad and indeed corrupt judges of such issues, and often they even prove themselves bad judges of their own long-run interests, for it is only the short-run promise that tells politically and only short-run rationality that asserts itself effectively.” ~ Joseph A. Schumpeter; Capitalism, Socialism, & Democracy, pp. 260-1; 1942

“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy.” ~ Elmer T. Peterson; The Daily Oklahoman, p. 12A; December 9, 1951

“When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.” ~ ✡Hannah Arendt✡; “On Violence”; Crises of the Republic; 1972

“For Aristotle, democracy is possible only within homogeneous ethnic groups, while despots have always reigned over highly fragmented societies. A multi-ethnic society is thus necessarily anti-democratic and chaotic, for it lacks philia, this profound, flesh-and-blood fraternity of citizens. Tyrants and despots divide and rule, they want the City divided by ethnic rivalries. The indispensable condition for ensuring a people’s sovereignty accordingly resides in its unity. Ethnic chaos prevents all philia from developing… Civic spirit, like public safety, social harmony, and solidarity, is based not on education or persuasion alone, but on cultural unanimity — on common values, lifestyles, and innate behaviours.” ~ Guillaume Faye; Why We Fight; 2011

“Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.” ~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe; The Paradox of Imperialism; June 5, 2013

“Neither theory nor practice supports the idea that more participation will produce better policy outcomes, or will improve the public’s approbation of government, or is even attainable in an environment dominated by extreme partisans and narrow interest groups.” ~ More Professionalism, Less Populism; paper by ✡Jonathan Rauch✡ & ✡Benjamin Wittes✡; Brookings Institution; May 31, 2017

“An unfortunate side effect of democracy is that it incentivizes citizens to be ignorant, irrational, tribalistic, and to not use their votes in very serious ways. We have to ask ourselves what we think government is actually for... There’s another way of looking at government, which is that it’s a tool, like a hammer, and the purpose of politics is to generate just and good outcomes, to generate efficiency and stability, and to avoid mistreating people... The idea is that anyone or any deliberative body that exercises power over anyone else has an obligation to use that power in good faith, and has the obligation to use that power competently. If they’re not going to use it in good faith, and they’re not going to use it competently, that’s a claim against them having any kind of authority or any kind of legitimacy.” ~ Dr. Jason Brennan; political philosopher & applied ethicist; Epistocracy; Vox; November 9, 2018