Trevor Dailey's Weblog

The Internet is full of information, and not all of it is correct. I first heard about this quote after part of it was read on a radio show/podcast called, Just Right. 

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the 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.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

The quote, sent in by a listener, was attributed to Alexander Tytler. I liked the quote, so I searched for it on the 'net. I found it, but there was something odd about it to me. It didn't feel like something written in 1770 to me. The same quote I found on different sites had the word "lousy" in it, and I knew the informal word "lousy" was not used in 1770. Of course, with the cut, copy, paste, propagate Internet I kept finding the same suspicious quote. Then I found a webpage that taught me once again to remember that just because it is on the Internet does not mean it is true, factual, or correct. Tytler never said, nor ever wrote, that quote. 

The Truth About Tytler

Remember that old newspaper reporter mantra to always check the facts. 

© Trevor Dailey