Not by Churchill: “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
Desert News in Salt Lake City is the latest to publish this red herring.
Commonly attributed to him, but with no authority, this is not quite as cynical as Winston Churchill could be—but not about Democracy.
Though he sometimes despaired of Democracy’s slowness to act for its own preservation, Churchill had a more positive attitude towards the average voter. On 31 October 1944, for example, in the House of Commons:
At the bottom of all the tributes paid to democracy is the little man, walking into the little booth, with a little pencil, making a little cross on a little bit of paper—no amount of rhetoric or voluminous discussion can possibly diminish the overwhelming importance of that point. —Churchill By Himself, page 100 (a favorite of TV journalist Chris Matthews).
His best known (but not original) remark about Democracy came in the Commons on 11 November 1947, but by his own admission Churchill was quoting someone else:
Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. —Churchill By Himself, page 583 (italics mine).
More on this subject in a previous post.
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Ah, good question! Beyond my ken, but it’s true, isn’t it? Check out Watters’ World on Memorial Day.
It’s not in any of the good quote sources I checked. I suspect it’s one of those bon mots made up by cynics and ascribed to everybody from MLK to Richard Nixon.
Who DID originally make the comment about the 5-minute conversation?