"Demagogue" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he learnt in the open, upon political tubs and platforms; and he is very legitimately proud of it. He boasts of being a demagogue; "The cart and the trumpet for me," he says, with admirable good sense. Everyone will remember the effective appearance of Cyrano de Bergerac in the first act of the fine play of that name; when instead of leaping in by any hackneyed door or window, he suddenly springs ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... his privilege in the choice of his representative. This was done by declaring the names of those he voted for. These peculiar institutions cultivated open and manly bearing, pride, and independence. There was little opportunity for the arts of the demagogue; and the elevation of sentiment in the suffragist made him despise the man, however superior his talents, who would attempt them. The voter's pride was to sustain the power of his State in the national councils, to have a great man for his Governor; they were the representatives of his ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... favour. I am not certain whether the latter are not to be most dreaded of the two, for those who make a trade of the confidence of the people seldom fail to corrupt them—they find it more profitable to flatter their passions than to enlighten their understandings; and a demagogue of this kind, who obtains an office by exciting one popular insurrection, will make no scruple of maintaining himself in it by another. An inferrence may likewise be drawn of the great necessity of cultivating such a degree of useful knowledge in the middle order of society, as may not only prevent ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... life of Louis XVI., and was imprisoned for ten months during the Terror. He left France bitterly disappointed with the failure of the republic, and passed the rest of his days in America. "Paine's ignorance," says Sir Leslie Stephen, "was vast, and his language brutal; but he had the gift of a true demagogue—the power of wielding a ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... appends to it, in order to prevent the misunderstanding that our Lord was setting so much store by earthly conditions as to suppose that virtue and blessedness were uniformly attached to any of these. Jesus Christ was no vulgar demagogue flattering the poor and inveighing against the rich. Luke's 'ye poor' shows at once that Christ was not speaking about all the poor in outward condition, but about a certain class of such. No doubt the bulk of His disciples were poor men who had been drawn or driven ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the elder Balzac 'feliciter', Sarrasin 'burlesque'. Mad. de Sevigne exclaims against her daughter for employing 'effervescence' in a letter (comment dites-vous cela, ma fille? Voila un mot dont je n'avais jamais oui parler). 'Demagogue' was first hazarded by Bossuet, and was counted so bold a novelty that it was long before any ventured to follow him in its use. Somewhat earlier Montaigne had introduced 'diversion' and 'enfantillage', though not without being rebuked by cotemporaries on the score of the ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... While literature in Greece had reached its highest and had become corrupt, there had been none in Rome during the five centuries of its history. All this time, too, there had been but one public holiday and a single circus; but during the interval between the first and second Punic wars a demagogue had instituted a second circus and a new festival, called the plebeian games. Other festivals followed, and in time their cost became exceedingly great, and their influence very bad. Fights of gladiators were introduced just at the outbreak of the first Punic ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... often misconceived, even by those who sought to follow him most loyally. Thus it happened that he was blamed for two opposite faults. Some, pointing to the fact that he had frequently altered his views, denounced him as a demagogue profuse of promises, ready to propose whatever he thought likely to catch the people's ear. Others complained that there was no knowing where to have him; that he had an erratic mind, whose currents ran underground and came to the surface in unexpected places; that he did not consult ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce
... like the colony, it secured a system of military control over the occupied district: and that the purely social object of land-distribution, if it had been advanced at all, was considered to be characteristic rather of the demagogue than the statesman. From a strategic point of view such a measure was unnecessary; from an economic, it assumed, not only a craving for allotments amongst the poorer class, of which there was perhaps little evidence, but a belief, which must have been held to be sanguine in ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... particular examination, which was sufficiently fierce, for more than once had they threatened to turn back the trembling, ignorant applicant on mere suspicion. The cunning Baptiste lent himself to their feelings with the skill of a demagogue, affecting a zeal equal to their own, while, at the same time, he took care most to excite their suspicions where there was the smallest danger of their being rewarded with success. Through this fiery ordeal one passed after another, until most of the nameless vagabonds ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... the price of the corn still lower, as was done by Saturninus in 100 B.C., for political purposes. To prevent this Sulla abolished the Gracchan system in toto; but it was renewed in 73 B.C., and in 58 the demagogue P. Clodius made the distribution of corn gratuitous. In 46 Caesar found that no less than 320,000 persons were receiving corn from the State for nothing; by a bill, of which we still possess a part,[61] he reduced the number to 150,000, and by a rigid system of ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... the true conservative; the inspirer of all new truths, revealing in His Bible to every age abysses of new wisdom, as the times require; and yet the vindicator of all which is ancient and eternal—the justifier of His own dealings with man from the beginning. She spoke of Him as the true demagogue—the champion of the poor; and yet as the true King, above and below all earthly rank; on whose will alone all real superiority of man to man, all the time-justified and time-honoured usages of the family, the society, the nation, stand ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... person to take charge of his measure in the House of Commons. This person was a member who was not connected with the government, and who neither had, nor deserved to have, the ear of the House, a noisy, purse-proud, illiterate demagogue, whose Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the jest of the newspapers, Alderman Beckford. It may well be supposed that these strange proceedings produced a ferment through the whole political ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... one respect, he followed his father's example and even bettered it,—his counsellors were chosen by preference among the tiers etat, and frequently even among men of base extraction. When occasion required, he did not disdain any of the arts of the demagogue: on entering Paris after the indecisive battle of Montlhery, with the Burgundians, almost under the walls of the capital, he took supper with the principal ladies of the city in the house of Charles de Melun, and so moved ...
— Paris from the Earliest Period to the Present Day; Volume 1 • William Walton
... adjournment of the council. His evil genius is M. Petit, now a senator, the present mayor of Amiens. I have caught M. Goblet offering the holy water with his hand behind my back to his wife; but M. Petit is an outspoken unbeliever, and a very type of the anti-christian demagogue.' ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... rendered the bare possibility of encountering it appalling. The critical moment, however, for the interference of Government had at length arrived, and it spoke out in a voice of thunder, prohibiting the monster meeting. The rest is matter of history. The monster demagogue fell prostrate and confounded among his panic-stricken confederates; and, in an agony of consternation, declared their implicit obedience to the proclamation, and set about dispersing the myriad dupes, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various
... agreeable and insidious that by and by he begins to believe himself grossly underpaid, though he may be getting twice what he is worth. He doesn't reason about it; that's the last thing he'll do for you. In this mood he lets himself be flown away by the breath of some loud-mouthed demagogue, who has no interest in the matter beyond hearing his own talk and passing round the hat after the meeting is over. That is what has happened to our folks below. But they ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... will remember the frequency of the speeches in that charming book. Whenever some terrible emergency arose, or some alarming quarrel or disheartening panic occurred, in the course of the retreat of the Ten Thousand, an oration from one of the commanders—not a demagogue's appeal to the lower passions, but a calm exposition of circumstances addressed to the sober judgment—usually sufficed to set all things in order. To my mind this is one of the most impressive historical lessons conveyed in Xenophon's book. And this peculiar kind of self-control, ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... Pilate was unpopular in Judaea, for he had taken the treasures of the Temple at Jerusalem to build waterworks, causing a tumult in which many were killed. Now he was almost forgotten, but very strangely, the fame of this crucified demagogue, Jesus, seemed to grow, since there were many who made a kind of god of him, preaching doctrines in his name that were contrary to the law and offensive to every sect ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... demonstrations. In the Duma he assailed even a portion of the Social Democratic group as belonging to the bourgeoisie, succeeding in splitting it in two factions and becoming the leader of the Bolshevik faction, numbering six. This blatant demagogue, whom Lenine called "the Russian Bebel," was proposed for membership in the International Socialist Bureau, the supreme council of the International Socialist movement, and would have been sent as a delegate to that body as a representative of Russian Socialist movement but for ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... permitted no fine scruples to stand in the way of success. He had once been minister, under a Democratic administration, to a small Central American state. Political rivals had characterized him as a tricky demagogue, which may of course have been a libel. He had an amiable disposition, possessed the gift of eloquence, and ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... tin plate will develop, and has already developed, tin mines in several states and territories, so that we may confidently hope that in a short period we will be sweetened by untaxed home sugar, and protected by untaxed tin plate. The arts of the demagogue, which were at the last election played upon the credulous to deceive them as to the effects of the McKinley bill, will return to plague the inventors, and this Republican measure, with its kindred measures, reciprocity and fair play to American ships, will be among the boasted ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... dangerous companionship with the vulgarities and sentimentalities of the London stage. I heard people around me confessing that they had not read the book. How terrible must have been the disillusion of those people, if they had ever expected anything of Tolstoi, and if they really believed that this demagogue Prince, who stands in nice poses in the middle of drawing-rooms and of prison cells, talking nonsense with a convincing disbelief, was in any sense a mouthpiece for Tolstoi's poor simple little gospel. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... gods of his dependence fully manifest in the original "Dii" or "Deis." The people do not often err materially or long. They may throne a wooden god or a baboon for a short moment, but that moment soon passes. As a political body no demagogue with words supplying the place of brains, can long override them; and as an army they never make a favorite of a fool or a coward. The American people did not err for a moment as to where the responsibility of the sad check to the army of the Potomac ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... The demagogue Cleon had really been lurking out of sight, and listening to the conversation. And so had another man with a yellow complexion and a full black beard, who seemed to belong to the artisan class. When the brilliant company had departed, Cleon stepped forward, laid his hand on the stranger's ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... seems to be a true demagogue, otherwise he would not resort to a falsehood to please his constituents. I never in any manner, directly or indirectly, stated or intimated that packers are or ever were in collusion with dealers in diseased live stock. Moreover, the laws ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... there may be some one with either the thinking or the rising element in his composition; and if the right ingredient be not added, the fermentation will turn sour, as my neglect had very nearly made it do with him. He would have been a fine demagogue by this time, if he had not had a generous temper ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... in physical contact with him. His race is not an infant; it is a degenerate—older than yours in time. At last we are face to face with the man whom slavery concealed with its rags. Suffrage is but the new paper cloak with which the Demagogue has sought to hide the issue. Can we assimilate the negro? The very question is pollution. In Hayti no white man can own land. Black dukes and marquises drive over them and swear at them for getting under their wheels. Is civilization a patent cloak with which law-tinkers ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... his words be false when his actions are so generous? What prompted him to give the miner's widow a thousand dollars? Was it a desire to do an act of charity, or was it as my father tells me, the act of a demagogue? ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... Garnett, in the slow and sententious manner he adopted, "is a radical and a demagogue, a positive scourge to the town. As ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... He lived but this very dissension, this very bloodshedding and misery that are charged against His Church? It was precisely on this account that He was given into the hands of Pilate. He stirreth up the people. He makes Himself a King. He is a contentious demagogue, a disloyal citizen, a ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson
... no impression on his mind. In the course of six weeks he published[d] two more offensive tracts, and distributed them among the soldiery. A new mutiny broke out at Oxford; its speedy suppression emboldened the council; the demagogue was reconducted[e] to his cell in the Tower; and Keble, with forty other commissioners, was appointed[f] to try him for his last offence on the recent statute of treasons. It may, perhaps, be deemed a weakness in Lilburne ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... stupendous roles. This egocentric interpretation of history has not only been the dominant one in explaining the great political changes of the past, it is now the reasoning of the common mind, of the yellow press, of the demagogue, in dealing with the causes of the evils of the present day. The Republican Party declared that President McKinley was responsible for prosperity; by equally sound reasoning Czolgosz may have argued that he was responsible for social misery. According to this ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... indefatigable reporter, in its broad sheet. How great was the neglect of Welsh society, and every thing Welsh, when this sort of war-cry of treason could be raised, this trump of rebellion sounded, and, as it were, from the pulpit "Evangelical," with perfect impunity to the demagogue, thus prostituting religion itself to the cause of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... only a fraction of them voted for any one of you." Then that origin was the very worst that could possibly be selected, the votes of the uneducated multitude; you must have foreseen that they would give you a demagogue or a charlatan. The absence of a second Chamber, and the absence of a power of dissolution, are minor faults, but still serious ones. When the President and the Assembly differed, they were shut up together to fight it out without ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... of both is the same, and they alike exercise a despotic rule over the better citizens. The decrees of the Demos correspond to the edicts of the tyrant, and the demagogue is to the one what the flatterer is to the other. Both have great power—the flatterer with the tyrant, the demagogue with democracies of the kind which we are describing. The demagogues make the ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... a somewhat singular thing that Rochefort, who was regarded even by his friends as a vain, mad-brained demagogue, has proved himself one of the most sensible and practical members of the Government. He has entirely subordinated his own particular views to the exigencies of the defence of the capital; and it is owing to his good sense that the ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... pressed against wet working raiments, white gloved hands rested upon greasy shoulders. Officers jostled privates, sailors vied with soldiers in the scrum before the entrance to the microbic land of tunnels. War is a potent demagogue. ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... gives us credit for, are the great majority of us eager to help our neighbors. The trouble is that the demagogue thinks this, the most difficult of all things, an easy task. God and Nature are harsh when they are training men, and we, alas, are soft, hence most of our failures. Correction must be given with a rod, not with a sop. ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... Mr. Hullah had not risen into a power more enviable than that of kings, and given to every workman a free entrance into the magic world of harmony and melody, where he may prove his brotherhood with Mozart and Weber, Beethoven and Mendelssohn. Great unconscious demagogue!—leader of the people, and labourer in the cause of divine equality!—thy reward is with the Father of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... David dimly felt familiar, and after listening for a few minutes to the lad's tirade against the 'autocracy of the school director' and the 'bureaucratic methods of the inspector,' it dawned upon him that the little demagogue ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... been a dramatic actor, replied with his accustomed readiness and effrontery. A young man unacquainted with mobs would have descanted indignantly and with many theatrical flourishes on the dignity and usefulness of the player's vocation; an ordinary demagogue would have frankly admitted the discourteous impeachment, and pleaded in mitigation that he had always acted in leading parts and for high salaries. Sergeant Wilkins took neither of those courses, for he knew his audience, and was aware that his connection ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... portions of the country. Strikes and lock-outs were part of the news almost every day. The causes were various. One lay in the vast numbers of immigrants hither and the low, ignorant character of many of them—clay for the hand of the first unscrupulous demagogue. ...
— History of the United States, Volume 4 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... agreeable. An ill-favored countenance is not necessarily a stumbling-block, at the outset, to its owner, which cannot be surmounted, for who does not know how much a happy manner often does to neutralize the ill effects of forbidding looks? The fascination of the demagogue Wilkes's manner triumphed over both physical and moral deformity, rendering even his ugliness agreeable; and he boasted to Lord Townsend, one of the handsomest men in Great Britain, that "with half an hour's start he would get ahead of his lordship in the affections ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... Convention, the montagnard, the regicide who had insulted Louis XVI., who had painted the apotheosis of Marat, and with a malicious hand had drawn the features of Marie Antoinette on her way to the scaffold; it was this artist, this fierce demagogue, the ardent Revolutionist, who was commissioned with painting the official representation of the coronation. He carried his gallantry so far as to choose for his subject, not the moment when Napoleon crowned himself, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... half a dinner, will choose a legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a legislature will be chosen? On one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for vested rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalists and usurers and asking why anybody should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage while thousands of honest folks are in want of necessaries. Which of the two ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... and foul-mouthed, slatternly women—vile, unclean harpies of the slums—dipped their brooms in the reeking gutters and slashed their filth into the stern, soldierly faces,—for hours, for days, they coolly held that misguided, drink-crazed, demagogue-excited mob at bay, reopening railways, protecting trains, escorting Federal officials, forcing passage after passage through the turbulent districts, until the fury of the populace wore itself out against the ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... malice and greed, envy and sullen hatred. The wind is sowed by the men who preach such doctrines, and they cannot escape their share of responsibility for the whirlwind that is reaped. This applies alike to the deliberate demagogue, to the exploiter of sensationalism, and to the crude and foolish visionary who, for whatever reason, apologizes for ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... Greece and Rome, Demosthenes and Cicero, though each of them a leader (or as the Greeks call it a demagogue) in a popular state, yet seem to differ in their practice upon this branch of their art; the former who had to deal with a people of much more politeness, learning, and wit, laid the greatest weight of his oratory upon the ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... Laurentian Library, founded by Cosimo Vecchio, and treasured and added to by Piero and Lorenzo il Magnifico, but scattered and partly destroyed by the vandalism and futile stupidity of Savonarola and his puritans in 1494. Savonarola, however, was a cleverer demagogue than our Oliver (it is well to remember that he was a Dominican), for he persuaded the Signoria to let him have such of the MSS. as he could find for the library of S. Marco. The honour of such a person is perhaps not worth discussing, ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... convince the staid burghers who remained in Europe, of the enormity of long hair. During the absence of Richard Coeur de Lion, his English subjects not only cut their hair close, but shaved their faces. William Fitzosbert, or Long-beard, the great demagogue of that day, reintroduced among the people who claimed to be of Saxon origin the fashion of long hair. He did this with the view of making them as unlike as possible to the citizens and the Normans. He wore his own beard hanging down to his waist, from whence ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... state are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... generally means when he is not abused or flattered; but how supremely ridiculous, not to say destructive, he is when he gets to masquerading in the robes of the scholar or the judge; and how criminal is the demagogue who seeks personal aggrandisement by ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various
... wrestling with the gnarled and haughty oak. You might have heard him roaring in the depths of the woods, had you been here, venerable DEIDRICH, day and night for a sevennight, apparently just for the sake of making a noise, and compelling the obeisance of the forest. Like any other demagogue, he gains attention by his blusterings. How lowly that young poplar bent before him, while the old hemlocks scarcely deigned a show of reverence! When you were in your youth, and the world seemed larger than now, did you not feel more of respect and awe for ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... here—it is here, in this exalted refuge—here, if anywhere, will resistance be made to the storms of political phrensy and the silent arts of corruption; and if the Constitution be destined ever to perish by the sacrilegious hands of the demagogue or the usurper, which God avert, its expiring agonies will be ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... end. Take away the intermediate power of the priests, and an insurrection in Brobdignag at the call of the King of Lilliput might be as hopefully expected as that the Irish people would stir as they are now prepared to do at the call of a political demagogue. Now these civil disabilities do not directly affect the priests; they therefore must have ulterior views, and though it must be flattering to their vanity to shew that they have the Irish representation in their own hands, and though ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... pretension, or perhaps even ambition, to shine. The anti-Orange faction, to which his parents and family appertained, pushed him forward, and elected him, in 1795, a member of the First Batavian National Convention, where, according to the spirit of the times, his speeches were rather those of a demagogue than those of a Republican. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were the constant themes of his political declamations, infidelity his religious profession, and the examples of immorality, his social lessons; so rapid and dangerous ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike the fancy of the electorate; and though in advanced modern States, where the artizan is better educated than the King, it takes a much bigger man to be a successful demagogue than to be a successful courtier, yet he who holds popular convictions with prodigious energy is the man for the mob, whilst the frailer sceptic who is cautiously feeling his way towards the next century has no chance unless he happens by accident to have the specific ...
— Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion • George Bernard Shaw
... see. Though he burned with an enthusiastic zeal for liberty, and displayed rare genius for administration, he had no ambition to rule Florence like a dictator. Savonarola was neither a reformer in the northern sense of the word, nor yet a political demagogue. His sole wish was to see purity of manners and freedom of self-government re-established. With this end in view he bade the Florentines elect Christ as their supreme chief; and they did so. For the same end he abstained from appearing in the State Councils, and left the Constitution ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... forums. The Piraeus was so celebrated for its commerce, that it became a proverbial saying in Greece, "Famine does not come from the Piraeus." The extent and convenience of the Piraeus may be judged of from this circumstance, that under the demagogue Lycurgus, the whole naval force of the nation, amounting to 400 triremes, were safely and easily laid up in its ...
— Robert Kerr's General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 18 • William Stevenson
... his father's will, harangued his father's workmen and other workmen at the Cheshire Cheese, telling them that Labour was the salt of the earth, and that Capital was the foe to Labour! Of course they loved him. The demagogue who is of all demagogues the most popular, is the demagogue who is a demagogue in opposition to his apparent nature. The radical Earl, the free-thinking parson, the squire who won't preserve, the tenant who defies his landlord, the capitalist with a theory for dividing profits, the ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope
... Elizabeth, and then wandered to Spain and Italy, where he subsisted, in indigence and obscurity, on the bread which he earned by apostatizing to the faith of Rome. So fell this agitator of domestic broils, whose name passed into a proverb, denoting a powerful and turbulent demagogue[30]. ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... in that region was entitled, "We'll Drive the Bloody Tyrant Lincoln From Our Dear Native Soil." A little later, the Equal Rights Expositer of Visalia characterized President Lincoln as "a narrow minded bigot, an unprincipled demagogue, and a ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... abandoned. Biddy adopted her, though the mother had been a rather undesirable Frenchwoman; and now when I saw her smiling at the tall white girl on the Laconia, I had thought for an instant that Biddy and her stepdaughter might be in flight together. O'Brien was a drunkard, as well as a demagogue; and not long after Brigit's flitting with him there was a scandal about the accepting of bribes from politicians on the opposing side, apparently his greatest enemies; but a minor scandal compared to what ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Prince Yanko Racowitza. You never heard of him, of course. He is out of your class, because he is good, and gentle, and kind, and of noble blood. And you are a demagogue, and a demigod, and a Jew, and a Mephisto! I told Yanko I would not wed him until I saw you. He has been trying to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... is very true that a man like that makes no demagogue appeals to the people. He will not be apt to ally himself with any specially radical party. He will never say that an unwashed man has as good chance for godliness as a washed man, because he will not believe it. He will never ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... concluded. He was desirous that the Pacification should be referred for approval, not to the municipal magistrates only, but to the people itself. In all great emergencies, the man who, in his whole character, least resembled a demagogue, either of antiquity or of modern times, was eager for a fresh expression of the popular will. On this occasion, however, the demand for approbation was superfluous. The whole country thought with his thoughts, and spoke with his words, and the Pacification, as soon as published, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... in our presence, so that I could draw the separate groups of the charming relief, the Genii of the Thiergarten, I do not remember a single stroke of Streichenberg's work, though I can recall all the better the gay manner of the artist whom we again met in 1848 as a demagogue. ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... To play the demagogue for purposes of self-interest is a cardinal sin against the people in a democracy, exactly as to play the courtier for such purposes is a cardinal sin against the people under other forms of government. A man who ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... politics of the bond; it has no platform except the platform of cent per cent. It suffices that when a president is to be elected he shall be one of us. He shall not be a man of the people; else in that case he would be a demagogue, a windbag, a vox et praeterea nil. Our man shall not even know the despised people. He shall not smell of the filthy ground, but must be "sound" on questions of finance. If he be not "sound," we will make him so. We will teach him his paces. If the people ...
— The Arena - Volume 18, No. 92, July, 1897 • Various
... something and some one which is to come, and which yet is very near at hand. The wild rocks are round him, the clear sky is over him, and nothing more. He, the gentleman born, the clergyman born—for you must recollect who and what St John the Baptist was, and that he was neither democrat nor vulgar demagogue, nor flatterer of ignorant mobs, but a man of an ancestry as ancient and illustrious as it was civilised, and bound by long ties of duty, of patriotism, of religion, and of the temple worship of God:—he, ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... control the destinies of men and nations, they did not think it decent to abandon public affairs to Providence; nor did they avert their gaze from them as too mundane for the squeamish intellectual to handle and turn them over to the tender mercies of the ignorant and less scrupulous demagogue or doctrinaire. Their public affairs were no more interesting than ours: they were indeed considerably less interesting—unless we are prepared to argue that the election of generals to command an army far smaller than the Swiss is a more arresting issue than ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... chief rules of his conduct, and the fact that he obtained such enormous loans proves that there were rich lenders who were ready to risk fortunes upon his success. And it was in dealing with the Roman plebeian that he learned to command the Roman soldier, with the tact of a demagogue and the firmness of an autocrat. He knew that a man must give largely, even recklessly, to be beloved, and that in order to be respected he must be able to refuse coldly and without condition, and that in all ages the ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... Granicus, he would have been proud of his fame as a horse-breaker. Fox sees, as all men see, that great changes, for either good or ill, are coming on the world. Next to that of a great king, perhaps the most tempting rank to ambition would be that of a great demagogue." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... for Canada he sketched a plan, imperfect in some details, but wise in broad conception, for pacifying the Canadas, and went further in elaborating a scheme, also defective, for the Confederation of British North America under the Crown on the lines conceived by the despised demagogue, Mackenzie.[27] But the two men who, by influencing Durham, probably did most to save Canada for the Empire and to lay the foundations of the present Imperial structure, were Charles Buller, the Radical M.P., and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, both of whom accompanied ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... planter, who was a Frenchman by birth. He bade me sit down beside his fire, and we began to talk with that freedom which befits persons who meet in the backwoods, two thousand leagues from their native country. I was aware that my host had been a great leveller and an ardent demagogue forty years ago, and that his name was not unknown to fame. I was, therefore, not a little surprised to hear him discuss the rights of property as an economist or a landowner might have done: he spoke of the necessary gradations which fortune ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... that he seldom cared whether he lost it or not. He was a born radical as are all true conservatives. He was too much "absorbed by the absolute," too much of the universal to be either—though he could be both at once. To Cotton Mather, he would have been a demagogue, to a real demagogue he would not be understood, as it was with no self interest that he laid his hand on reality. The nearer any subject or an attribute of it, approaches to the perfect truth at its base, the more does qualification become necessary. ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... thrill of awe, something like that which the demagogue in Aristophanes might have felt when braved by the sausage-maker, shot through the valiant heart of Tom Bowles. He did not like those ominous words, and still less the lugubrious tone of voice in which they were uttered, ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Manitou, who had fashioned him with His hands, and placed him between the Seneca and the Cayuga, to hunt the deer and trap the beaver. But See-wise was one of those who practiced arts that you pale-faces condemn, while you submit to them. He was a demagogue among the red men, and set up the tribe ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper
... their hands to buy back the popular support. Caius Gracchus, however, had his way, and carried all before him. He escaped the rock on which his brother had been wrecked. He was elected tribune a second time. He might have had a third term if he had been contented to be a mere demagogue. But he, too, like Tiberius, had honorable aims. The powers which he had played into the hands of the mob to obtain, he desired to use for high purposes of statesmanship, and his instrument broke in his hands. He was too wise to suppose that a Roman mob, fed by bounties from the treasury, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various
... from the very start he had had the hardihood to attack the "established order" at several points and to preach unorthodox political doctrines. The wealthiest citizens were outraged, and hotly denounced Bruce as a "yellow journalist" and a "red-mouthed demagogue." It was commonly held by the better element that his ultra-democracy was merely a mask, a pose, an advertising scheme, to gather in the gullible subscriber and to force himself ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... long), good-bye to sport in England. Every man who loves his country more than his pleasure or his pocket—and, thank God, that includes the great majority of us yet, however much we may delight in gun and rod, let any demagogue in the land say what he pleases—will cry, "Down with it," and lend a hand to put it down ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... British Columbia. His short figure gave an impression of abounding strength and energy which obtained him the nickname of "the little Giant." With no assignable higher quality, and with the blustering, declamatory, shamelessly fallacious and evasive oratory of a common demagogue, he was nevertheless an accomplished Parliamentarian, and imposed himself as effectively upon the Senate as he did upon the people of Illinois and the North generally. He was, no doubt, a remarkable man, ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... have our blades been pointed towards your breast? Because, King Rudolph, you are yourself a traitor. You belong to the ruling class and have turned your back upon your order. You, a King, have made yourself a brother to the demagogue at the street corner; yearning for the cheap applause of the serf. You have shorn nobility of ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... runs the mountainous and craggy ridge That tempts ambition. On the summit, see, The seals of office glitter in his eyes; He climbs, he pants, he grasps them. At his heels, Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends, And with a dextrous jerk soon twists him down And wins them, but to lose them in his turn. Here rills of oily eloquence, in soft Meanders, lubricate the course they take; The modest speaker is ashamed and grieved To engross a moment's notice, and yet begs, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... thought, was to be preserved, only by preserving the authority of the laws, and maintaining the energy of government. Scarcely did society present two characters which, in his opinion, less resembled each other, than a patriot and a demagogue. ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall
... rebellion, and impunity to crime. A government paternal in vigour as in kindness; the control of a firm authority, supreme over all influence, to maintain order, to leave no excuse for party, to protect the peaceable, promptly to suppress all resistance to the law, and to give to the demagogue only the alternative between obedience and rebellion, will be required not more for the safety of the state, than for the welfare of ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... generals, Melliza exclaimed, "If you insist on plunder and devastation, I shall retire altogether," whereupon a tremendous hubbub ensued, in the midst of which Melliza withdrew and went over to Guimaras Island. But there were touches of humour in the speeches, especially when a fire-eating demagogue gravely proposed to surround an American warship with canoes and seize her; and again when Quintin Salas declared that the Americans would have to pass over his corpse before the town surrendered! Incendiaries and thieves were in overwhelming majority at the meeting; naturally (to the ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... of discovery. "What Mr. Emmet needs more than anything else is a friend out of his own class, some one like yourself, who could correct his perspective a little. How shall I explain it? He seems in danger of becoming a demagogue, and of resting his case ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... you are putting money into his pockets while your families suffer for food. There is no great principle at stake to make your conduct seem noble and to call forth sympathy for your suffering,—only foolishness and the blind following of a demagogue whose living depends upon ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... programme was to overthrow the tyrants as the enemies both of the people and of the popes, and to restore municipal self-government under papal protection. His attention was first directed to the city of Rome, which, after many vicissitudes since 1347, had fallen under the influence of a demagogue named Baroncelli. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... anger, or spite (if that be a lesser degree of the same affliction), became stirred in her bosom when she listened to the ward of Dr. Shrapnel. A silly pretty puss of a girl would not have excited it, nor an avowed blood-relative of the demagogue. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... immorality, and by the obscenity of his writings. Like Wilkes, he was heedless, not only of the laws of morality, but of the laws of honour. Yet he affected, like Wilkes, to unite the character of the demagogue to that of the fine gentleman. Like Wilkes, he conciliated, by his good-humour and his high spirits, the regard of many who despised his character. Like Wilkes, he was hideously ugly; like Wilkes, he made a ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... existing events that first succeeded the last revolution, no one thought of the fleur-de-lis with which the Bourbons had sprinkled everything in and about the capital, not to say France. This omission attracted the attention of some demagogue, and there was a little emeute, before the arch of the Carrousel, with threats of destroying these ornaments. Soon after, workmen were employed to deface everything like a fleur-de-lis in Paris. The hotel ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... or superintendent. Their ideas and resources are cramped, and the desire for higher social pleasure becomes extinct. They have no share in the traditions and social energy which make for progress. Too often their only place of meeting is a saloon, their only host a bartender; a local demagogue forms their public opinion. Men of ability and refinement, of social power and university cultivation, stay away from them. Personally, I believe the men who lose most are those who thus stay away. But the paradox is here; when cultivated ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... The Life of William Falconer The Shipwreck Occasional Elegy, in which the preceding narrative is concluded Miscellaneous Poems The Demagogue A Poem, sacred to the Memory of His Royal Highness Frederick Prince of Wales Ode on the Duke of York's second departure from England as Rear-Admiral The Fond Lover. A Ballad On the Uncommon Scarcity of Poetry in the Gentleman's Magazine for December last, 1755, by I. W., ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... a corps where they have had the good sense to get hold of two or three army men, who have had experience in war, as their field officers. We don't want to be under a worthy citizen who has been elected solely because he is popular in his quarter, or a demagogue who is chosen because he is a fluent speaker, and has made himself conspicuous by his abuse of Napoleon. This is not the time for tomfoolery; we want men who will keep a tight hand over us, and make us ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... character has been ruined by the stupid brutality of pedagogues. The parts of speech are a boy's pillory. I was myself flogged fifteen times in one forenoon over the conjugation of a verb. Punish if you will, but be kind too, and let the sugar-plum go with the rod.' This is not the language of a demagogue or a fanatic; it is the wise thought of ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... forgotten the Scotch invasion of 1745. Since that time the Scotch had been regarded with general disfavor; Scotch poverty and Scotch greediness for the good things of England had furnished constant topics for raillery and sarcasm; and more than one demagogue and political writer had sought popularity by pandering to the prevailing taste for attacks on the whole nation. Foremost among these was Mr. John Wilkes, member for Aylesbury, a man of broken fortunes and still more damaged character, but of a wit and ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... this or that party or profession. It consists in making the most prudent and religious choice they can; yet not in trusting to men, but, next God, to their own orders. "Give us good men, and they will make us good laws," is the maxim of a demagogue, and is (through the alteration which is commonly perceivable in men, when they have power to work their own wills) exceeding fallible. But "give us good orders, and they will make us good men," is the maxim of a legislator, and the ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... man who spoke against trusts and general monopolies of public necessities was called demagogue, socialist, anarchist, inciter of the masses against the classes, and ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... often marred by the moralizer, and Byron's by the demagogue, and Shelley's by the reformer, so Keats's work suffers by the opposite extreme of aloofness from every human interest; so much so, that he is often accused of being indifferent to humanity. His work is also criticised as being too effeminate for ordinary readers. Three ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... own situation, Malchus thought more of Hannibal and his brave companions in arms than of himself. The manner in which he had been kidnapped by the agents of Hanno, showed how determined was that demagogue to prevent the true state of things which prevailed in Italy from becoming known to the people of Carthage. In order to secure their own triumph, he and his party were willing to sacrifice Hannibal and his army, and to involve Carthage in the most ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... count. What has become of that demagogue, the traitor Wenzel, who headed the riot last year? I then recommended him to your special care." "And I let him have it, your excellency. I believe he has entirely lost his fancy for insurrectionary ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... Garnier, the Parisian workman who has had an experience of the hulks as the result of imbibing too freely of sentimental prose and of lending too ready an ear to the golden speech of some tavern demagogue, who has now had enough of politics and who scarcely troubles to think what former retailer of treasonable language, what Gracchus of the sidewalk may be minister, Vaudrey or Pichereau, or even Granet: all these types are separately ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... this demagogue of the American and French Revolution, his American biographer, Cheetham, says: "All sects have had their disgraceful members and offspring. Paine's father, a peaceful and industrious Quaker, connects him with the exemplary sect of the Friends. He received his education at the Grammar School of ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... "I had a chat with him in the lobby at the 'Royal' last night, and I must admit that, so far as Webb's concerned, this campaign is a particularly decent one. He can't help being a gentleman any more than he can help being a demagogue. Both instincts are in ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... imputation of demagogism, and earned for him the growing hatred of that dangerous class of men in the South who placed the safety of the institution of slavery above the interest and the welfare of the white laborer. But if he was a demagogue, he was always a brave one. In his early political life, when the mere nod of President Jackson was an edict in Tennessee, Johnson did not hesitate to espouse the cause of Hugh L. White when he was a candidate for the Presidency in 1836, ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... did,—as angrily and as much in earnest in the serious part of what I said as I was derisive in the rest. I did not care for any factious object, nor was I what is called anti-monarchical. I didn't know Cobbett, or Henry Hunt, or any demagogue, even by sight, except Sir Francis Burdett, and him by sight alone. Nor did I ever see, or speak a word with them, afterwards. I knew nothing, in fact, of politics themselves, except in some of those large and, as ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... necessary to man to a price never conceived of before. I do not wish to depreciate the value or importance of improvement in material comfort. When you hear a man denounce it, you may know that either he is not a clear, calm thinker, or else he is a demagogue. Material growth and material comfort are essential for the development of mental and spiritual activities. The result of this combination and material expansion, however, was to create great corporations which began to get control of things. The same spirit of combination ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... the conqueror and the intrigues of the demagogue are faithfully preserved through a succession of ages, the persevering and unobtrusive efforts of genius, developing the best blessings of the Deity to man, are often consigned ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles
... many loud talkers, who have more words than thoughts, and who get a great character as politicians and demagogues, simply because they have the art of stringing fine words together, which Moses, the true demagogue, the leader of the people, who led them indeed out of Egypt, had not. Beyond that we know little. Of his character one thing only is said: but that is most important. 'Now the man ...
— The Gospel of the Pentateuch • Charles Kingsley |
