As a defense about the potential soundness of democracy (as against monarchy or aristocracy [and by implication, today, oligarchy]), Lincoln's proverb is welcome. Of course, there's the moral of James Thurber's parable of The Owl Who Was God (Fables for Our Time, 1940): You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. And the you who does the fooling of this too-many-of-the-People can be they themselves. See, for example, the alarming results of the survey published by PIPA 2 weeks before the 2004 US elections: http://www.pipa.org/OnlineReports/Pres_Election_04/ html/new_10_21_04.html#1 (For a brush-up on cognitive dissonance theory, which the analysts have to resort to in order to explain this remarkable disconnection from reality in the fact of flagrant evidence, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance Thurber's warning is that citizens of a democracy have to be vigilant about their human tendency to want to pick someone to do their thinking for them, and then to be STEADFAST in following their STEADFAST leader, no matter what the indications are of the disastrous nature of the path he's on.

Vincent Bugliosi, 'in his book Outrage', praised the validity of this sentiment, but added 'you can fool most of the people, most of the time'. Very appropiate in this day and age. John

Abe should have put figures on it, some is far too abstract. Try, you can fool 95% of the people some of the time, you can fool all of the people 95% of the time, but you can not fool more than 5% of the people for more than 5% of the time.

This still holds true today and should serve as a warning to self-serving politicians that seek to line their pockets and those of their friends at our expense.

It think this as true today as it ever was.

I think this was the first quote (from anyone) that I memorized way back in my grade school days of the mid-60's. I vaguely remember wondering why would anyone really want to fool any of the people any of the time? It was impossible for me to imagine the events that were just around the corner that would answer that question and leave behind an atmosphere of cynicism that would completely change the way we view politics and the political process.

Good advice for politicians who say anything to get elected!! The voters will get you one way or another.