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==Voltaire on Democracy==
==Voltaire on Democracy==
Voltaire was a strong proponent of democracy in an age when republican government was practically nonexistent and kings ruled. In a dialogue between men of all the lands of his day, they lament "that there is not one republic in all this vast part of the world", and that they long to live in "The state where only the laws are obeyed". When the Brahmin is asked where that country is, he answers, 'We must look for it'.
<ref>http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volstate.html</ref>
Voltaire believed that any excesses or wrongs wrought by democracies were inherently less evil or harmful than those than could be inflicted by tyrannies.
"The great vice of democracy is certainly not tyranny and cruelty: there have been mountain-dwelling republicans, savage, ferocious; but it is not the republican spirit that made them so, it is nature.
The real vice of a civilized republic is in the Turkish fable of the dragon with many heads and the dragon with many tails. The many heads hurt each other, and the many tails obey a single head which wants to devour everything."
<ref> http://history.hanover.edu/texts/voltaire/volstate.html</ref>
[[category:philosophers]]
[[category:philosophers]]