"We...have enfranchised the whole adult and labouring population of these islands, saints and sinners alike, and are attempting the immense double enterprise not only of making each citizen count as one and an end in himself, but also of asking him to share effectively and intelligently in the responsibilities of municipal citizenship and imperial government...Democracy is still an aspiration and not a fact...What we have achieved is a democratic framework of government, which is not the same thing as a democratic society. We have perfected the machinery of popular government, and one immediate danger is that it may be seized and exploited in undemocratic ways for democratic ends. In the name of the sovereign people deeds may be done as cruel as those done by any Greek tyrant or mediaeval despot. It is terribly easy for those in power to confuse justice with the interest of the strong; but oppression of the few by the many is just as ugly as its opposite."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Prime Ministers of the United KingdomPoliticians from EnglandAcademics from EnglandAnglicans from the United KingdomConservative Party (UK) politicians
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
The John Clifford Lecture at Coventry (14 July 1930), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), pp. 39-40.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stanley_Baldwin
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Stanley Baldwin
Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin of Bewdley KG PC (3 August 1867 – 14 December 1947) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on three separate occasions (1923–24, 1924–29 and 1935–37).
307 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Stanley Baldwin →
Related Quotes
"I claim that, unlike the totalitarian States, we have managed to secure both progress and orderly development in indu…"
"The Conservatives can't talk of class war: they started it."
"...ideas may be very dangerous things. There is no country in Europe that has a constitution comparable to ours. I do…"
"The time was, when I was a boy, when people hardly dreamed that the day would come when there would be large numbers …"
"Improvements in housing—in which the Government has played a large part—is another direction in which sta…"
"My tongue, not my pen, is my instrument."
"I went out into Downing Street a happy man. Of course it was partly because an old buffer like me enjoys feeling that…"
"In the remote parts of that countryside where I was born and where old English phrases linger, though they may now be…"
"I do not think there is any single thing more important for our people, and for those who form public opinion, than t…"
"I come back to speed, and I want my last words to be on speed. I see a danger ahead that our people may become mechan…"