John Adams on Democracy

My favorite definitions of direct democracy: (1) Two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner, and (2) the right of the 51 percent to pee in the popcorn of the 49 percent.

"[D]emocracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy, such an anarchy
that every man will do what is right in his own eyes and no man's
life or property or reputation or liberty will be secure, and every
one of these will soon mould itself into a system of subordination
of all the moral virtues and intellectual abilities, all the powers
of wealth, beauty, wit and science, to the wanton pleasures, the
capricious will, and the execrable cruelty of one or a very few."

-- John Adams ("An Essay on Man's Lust for Power," 29 August 1763)

Adams (1735-1826) was 28 years old when he wrote this!