"There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage…Democracy provides swarms of such men." H.L. MENCKEN,
A Mencken Chrestomathy
"The liberals of the eighteenth century were filled with a boundless optimism. Mankind is rational, which permits the right opinion to emerge in the end. Light will replace darkness… Democracy with its freedom of thought, speech and press assures the success of the right doctrine. Let the masses decide; they will choose wisely…Nobody would now accept such optimism." LUDWIG VON MISES,
Notes and Recollections 
"If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it’s done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong)—how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered." AYN RAND, The Ayn Rand Column
"There are, to be sure, free spirits in the world, but their freedom, in the last analysis, is not much greater than that of a canary in a cage. They may leap from perch to perch; they may bathe and guzzle at their will; they may flap their wings and sing. But they are still in the cage…Democracy provides swarms of such men." H.L. MENCKEN, A Mencken Chrestomathy
"The liberals of the eighteenth century were filled with a boundless optimism. Mankind is rational, which permits the right opinion to emerge in the end. Light will replace darkness… Democracy with its freedom of thought, speech and press assures the success of the right doctrine. Let the masses decide; they will choose wisely…Nobody would now accept such optimism." LUDWIG VON MISES, Notes and Recollections 
"If we discard morality and substitute for it the Collectivist doctrine of unlimited majority rule, if we accept the idea that a majority may do anything it pleases, and that anything done by a majority is right because it’s done by a majority (this being the only standard of right and wrong)—how are men to apply this in practice to their actual lives? Who is the majority? In relation to each particular man, all other men are potential members of that majority which may destroy him at its pleasure at any moment. Then each man and all men become enemies; each has to fear and suspect all; each must try to rob and murder first, before he is robbed and murdered." AYN RAND, The Ayn Rand Column
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