I had been looking for this for awhile and could not remember who made the quote. I paraphrase it often and never get it right. Now that I have it again, I include it here.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with a result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years. The nations have progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith, to great courage, to liberty, to abundance, to selfishness, to complacency, to apathy, to dependency, back to bondage.” [Alexander Fraser Tytler, 1748-1813, From “The Decline and Fall of the Athenian Republic”]
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