105 Demagogue Quotes

Following is our list of demagogue quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about silence is strength.

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Famous Demagogue Quotes

The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots. — H. L. Mencken

The secret of the demagogue is to make himself as stupid as his audience so they believe they are clever as he. — Sayings

Demagoguery enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity. — Antoine de Saint-Exupery

When the goal of political action is no longer the defense of liberty, no word other than demagoguery can describe the despicable nature of politics. — Ron Paul

Reason and truth have rarely prevailed against demagoguery when the audience is too ignorant to tell the difference. — Charley Reese

It is when it is contended that "in a democracy right is what the majority makes it to be" that democracy degenerates into demagoguery. — Friedrich August von Hayek

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. — William Shakespeare

The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders...tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. — Hermann Goring

A democracy is no more than an aristocracy of orators. The people are so readily moved by demagogues that control must be exercised by the government over speech and press. — Thomas Hobbes

Hark to that shrill, sudden shout, The cry of an applauding multitude, Swayed by some loud-voiced orator who wields The living mass as if he were its soul! — William C. Bryant

Crisis is the rallying cry of the tyrant. — James Madison

A tyrant... is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. — Plato

A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself. — Joseph Pulitzer

Exploiting people's emotions of fear, envy and anxiety is not hope, it's not change, it's partisanship. We don't need partisanship. We don't need demagoguery, we need solutions. — Paul Ryan

Jingoism, racism, fear, religious fundamentalism: these are the ways of appealing to people if you're trying to organize a mass base of support for policies that are really intended to crush them. — Noam Chomsky

Short Demagogue Quotes

  • The conservatives nearly always tolerate the demagogue while he is destroying liberals. — Harry Golden
  • Where the laws are not supreme, there demagogues spring up. — Aristotle
  • Donald Trump removed all doubt. He is running for president as a fascist demagogue. — Rachel Maddow
  • Whiskey is carried into committee rooms in demijohns and carried out in demagogues. — Mark Twain
  • Everyone wants to demagogue everyone else. That may be good politics, but it's awful policy. — Chris Christie
  • Are there any monuments built to demagogues? I just don't think so. — Cory Booker
  • In every age the vilest specimens of human nature are to be found among demagogues. — Thomas B. Macaulay
  • Demagogue--a vessel containing beer and other liquids. — Mark Twain
  • It's political Daddyism and it's as old as demagogues and despotism. — Barry Goldwater
  • A demagogue must be neither an educated nor an honest man; he has to be an ignoramus and a rogue. — Aristophanes

Political Demagogue Quotes

Of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants. — Alexander Hamilton

You have delivered up our holy German Fatherland to one of the greatest demagogues of all time. I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done. — Ian Kershaw

Demagogues and agitators are very unpleasant, they are incidental to a free and constitutional country, and you must put up with these inconveniences or do without many important advantages. — Benjamin Disraeli

Quit demagoguing. It's not true. — Mary Matalin

As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown. — Stephen Jay Gould

Silence Is Strength Quotes

Silence is a source of great strength. - Lao Tzu

Silence is a source of great strength. — Lao Tzu

Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear; the strength so strong mere force is feebleness: the truth more first than sun, more last than star. — E. E. cummings

An intimate relationship is one in which neither party silences, sacrifices, or betrays the self and each party expresses strength and vulnerability, weakness and competence in a balanced way. — Harriet Lerner

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Take some time off to go within, in silence. With that, your charm becomes eternal, your love becomes unconditional & great strength arises. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Silence is a great source of strength. — John Heider

Strength is born in the deep silence of long-suffering hearts; not amid joy. — Felicia D. Hemans

Only in the sacredness of inward silence does the soul truly meet the secret, hiding God. The strength of resolve, which afterward shapes life, and mixes itself with action, is the fruit of those sacred, solitary moments. There is a divine depth in silence. We meet God alone. — Frederick William Robertson

When I take up my pen to write, I feel the strength of standing up and refusing to be silent. In an oppressive situation, silence is death. — Chenjerai Hove

Silence is no weakness of language. It is, on the contrary, its strength. It is the weakness of words not to know this. — Edmond Jabes

Quiet Determination Quotes

Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be all right, and the determined choice to praise God in all things. — Kay Warren

Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man. — Iain Duncan Smith

But I want to pay tribute to Anna Lee Woodruff, an extraordinary, selfless woman and beautiful grandmother who in her quiet determined way was a role model for her two daughters, and who left a lasting impression on so many who knew her. — Judy Woodruff

As states subsist in part by keeping their weaknesses from being known, so is it the quiet of families to have their chancery and their parliament within doors, and to compose and determine all emergent differences there. — John Donne

We lie under the network of arching shells and live in a suspense of uncertainty. If a shot comes, we can duck, that is all; we neither know nor can determine where it will fall." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 6 — Erich Maria Remarque

Although one is not inclined to be timid or nervous, it is nevertheless a trifle depressing to receive letters full of expostulation and entreaty: 'If you are determined to commit suicide, why not come home and do so in a quiet lady-like manner?' — Annie Smith Peck

But, drawn to her at that moment, he felt a quiet like the voice of the rain flow over him. He knew well enough that for her it was in fact no waste of effort, but somehow the final determination that it was had the effect of distilling and purifying the woman's existence. — Yasunari Kawabata

We must play music quietly, talk quietly, weep in private, because I am the all-powerful Zahir, who lays down the rules and determines the distance between railway tracks, the meaning of success, the best way to love, the importance of rewards. — Paulo Coelho

If for one whole day, quietly and determinedly, we were to give ourselves up to the ownership of Jesus and to obeying his orders, we should be amazed at its close to realize all he had packed into that one day. — Oswald Chambers

What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is. — Helen Keller

Demagoguery Quotes

American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery. — Henry A. Wallace

[Y]ou possess all the attributes of a demagogue; a screeching, horrible voice, a perverse, crossgrained nature and the language of the market-place. In you all is united which is needful for governing. — Aristophanes

Class warfare or soaking the so-called rich may make for good populist demagoguery and serve the political ends of the governing masterminds, but it does nothing to solve the grave realities of the federal government's insatiable appetite for spending and its inability to reform itself. — Mark Levin

The United Nations is useless...and also harmful. It is a land that flowers demagoguery with a bunch of newborn countries, devoid of any tradition. — Antonio de Oliveira Salazar

Selfishness and demagoguery take advantage of liberty. The selfish hand constantly seeks to control government, and every increase of governmental power, even to meet just needs, furnishes opportunity for abuse and stimulates the effort to bend it to improper uses. — Charles Evans Hughes

For too long, too many people dependent on Social Security have been cruelly frightened by individuals seeking political gain through demagoguery and outright falsehood, and this must stop. — Ronald Reagan

I think my main concern is because I worry about demagoguery. It`s real. You see the people standing up there and applauding. — Bernie Sanders

Without the truth of the people, politics degenerates into mere spectacle and democracy declines, leaving demagoguery and cynicism to fill the void. — Jerry Brown

Any politician who starts shouting election-year demagoguery about the rich and the poor should be asked, "What about the other 90 percent of the people?" — Thomas Sowell

We may repeat the awful revolutionary history of the 20th century because of the vulnerability of social movements to demagoguery. — Todd Gitlin

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More Demagogue Quotes

War is no longer made by simply analyzed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule. — Ernest Hemingway

We've got a great percentage of our population that, to our great shame, either cannot or, equally unfortunate, will not read. And that portion of our public is growing. Those people are suckers for the demagogue. — Walter Cronkite

Nor is the guilt entirely with the warmongers, plutocrats and demagogues. If people permit exploitation and regimentation in any name, they deserve their slavery. A tyrant does not make his tyranny possible. It is made by the people and not otherwise. — Jack Parsons

Athens' biggest worry was the sheer recklessness of its own democratic government. A simple majority of the citizenry, urged on and incensed by clever demagogues, might capriciously send out military forces in unnecessary and exhausting adventures. — Thucydides

Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers. — Chris Hedges

There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves. — Christopher Hitchens

Freedom of press and freedom of speech: What a blessing for a country while in the hands of honest, patriotic men; what a curse if in the hands of designing demagogues. — William J. H. Boetcker

Syllogisms а la mode - If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die. — H. L. Mencken

From the right, you get demagogues shouting about brown-skinned anchor babies and clamoring to deport the undocumented. From the left, you get advocacy for the oppressed but otherwise, when it comes to national civic identity, mainly silence. — Eric Liu

We cannot be wise while in the grip of a deep fear. ... This is why demagogues, when seeking our support, will first cause us to fear and hate, knowing when we are in the grip of a great fear, we will abandon common sense and wisdom, we will forsake the hard-won lessons of time and experience. — Philip Gulley

Better the rule of One, whom all obey, than to let clamorous demagogues betray our freedom with the kiss of anarchy. — Oscar Wilde

Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion. — Aristotle

Negro equality, Fudge!! How long in the Government of a God great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagoguism as this? — Abraham Lincoln

Whatever the label on the parties, or the war cries issuing from the demagogues who lead them, the practical choice is between the plutocracy on the one side and a rabble of preposterous impossibilists on the other. — H. L. Mencken

Demagogues are so easy to identify. They gesture a lot and speak with pulpit rhythms, using words that ring of religious fervour and god-fearing sincerity. Sincerity with nothing behind it takes so much practice. The practice can always be detected. Repetition. Great attempts to keep your attention on words. — Frank Herbert

"Magna Carta is the Law: Let the King look out." So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator - let them look out. — Stanley Baldwin

I am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I put it all down - I'm out on a limb here, so watch my back. — Billy Idol

The sure foundations of the state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin. — George William Curtis

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned. — Henry A. Wallace

Take Western nations on both sides of the Atlantic, where xenophobic demagogues have been allowed to turn the law-abiding workers who prop up their economies into barbaric freeloaders, all simply to further their nefarious ends. — Andre Naffis-Sahely

It's so easy to demagogue the issue and make someone who speaks out against the internal-combustion engine sound like an insane communist, when the truth is that the internal-combustion engine is the biggest threat to my life in the next 25 years, in terms of what it's doing to our environment and how it's depleting the ozone layer and so forth. — Bill Maher

Nothing so mystical. Human beings hunger for killing, that is all. It only takes a few politicians to stoke division, or a few demagogues encouraging hatred to set your kind upon one another. And then before you know it, you have a whole nation biting on its own tail, going round and round until there is nothing left but the snapping of teeth. — Paolo Bacigalupi

The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other. — James Fenimore Cooper

Through knowledge and understanding we will drive from the temple of freedom all who seek to establish over us thought control - whether they be agents of a foreign power or demagogues thirsty for personal power and public notice. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The best thing about Las Vegas is that no one pretends to be responsible for your behavior like they do in the rest of the country. There's no meddling self-righteous liberals or right-wing Christian demagogues telling you that you can't do something fun with your own time and money. If you can afford it, it's yours. — Drew Carey

The American doctrinaire is the converse of the American demagogue, and, in this way, is scarcely less injurious to the public. The first deals in poetry, the last in cant. He is as much a visionary on one side, as the extreme theoretical democrat is a visionary on the other. — James F. Cooper

Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual. — Robert A. Heinlein

Better a loving single-parent family than a 'conventional' family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue. — Moby

It is often sadly remarked that the bad economists present their errors to the public better than the good economists present their truths. It is often complained that demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it. — Henry Hazlitt

I do not write for a select minority, which means nothing to me, nor for that adulated platonic entity known as ‘The Masses’. Both abstractions, so dear to the demagogue, I disbelieve in. I write for myself and for my friends, and I write to ease the passing of time. — Jorge Luis Borges

We must never allow demagogues to divide us up by race, by religion, by national origin, by gender, or sexual orientation. Black and whites, Latino, Asian-American, Native American, Christian, Jew, Muslim, and every religion - straight or gay, male or female - we must stand together. This country belongs to all of us. — Bernie Sanders

But in his Farewell Address, George Washington made it clear that he perceived no greater threat to the American experiment than a partisan demagogue who 'agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against the other' — John Avlon

Trusting as we did to the virtue of the people, the real people, not the politicians and demagogues, we passed through the most responsible and trying scenes, sustained by the bone and sinew of the nation, the laborers of the land, where alone, in these days of Bank rule, and ragocrat corruption, real virtue and love of liberty is to be found. — Andrew Jackson

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