Churchill on Democracy
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.…