Sentence Examples:
He was no vulgar demagogue, like those of our dogmatic time.
A demagogue of bad character, attacked by Aristophanes as profligate, and an enemy of peace.
We still call the baser sort a demagogue, and his definition is still what it was among those who invented the term: "a flatterer of the people."
Those, indeed, whose ranks he had scattered, and whom he had thrown into the shade, still tried to brand him with the names of declaimer and demagogue.
Those at the helm were clever demagogues who were prepared to humor the people, provided they had the control of the public funds wherewith to indulge their licentious tastes.
The mere declaimer or demagogue may win a temporary hearing; but the man who leaves a lasting impress on the mind of the people must have in himself some real worth.
Fundamentally, it is the impoverished condition of the people, conjoined with restlessness, and supplemented by idle curiosity, making change easy and desirable, which has exposed these poor people to the designs of unscrupulous sharpers and demagogues.
He recalled the blatant boastfulness with which English demagogues claimed to be the sole possessors of enlightened consciences, and the tales of native races exploited, gin-poisoned, and annihilated by pioneers of civilization advancing with Bibles in their hands.
"The traffic in human souls," which figures so largely in the speeches of the divines and demagogues, and which so fiercely stirs up the most unhallowed passions of their hearers, is merely the transfer of a right to labor.
The sure foundations of states are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue's sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneration and ruin.
The enthusiasm real in some, feigned in others; stirring propositions, patriotic gifts, civic crowns, busts of leading republicans paraded round, symbols of superstition, and aristocracy burnt, songs loudly vociferated by demagogues in chorus at the opening of each sitting.
From him proceeded the tactics, whereby demagogues and tyrants, leaning for support on material interests, break down the governing Aristocracy, but subsequently legitimize the change of constitution by substituting a strict and efficient administration for the previous misgovernment.
As the supply of candidates is always much larger than the demand, the greater number fail, and, in their disappointment, finding no other profitable field nor the exercise of their talents, become demagogues, reformers and critics of the administration.
When, however, statesmen or politicians, or demagogues or well-meaning labor agitators or leaders, insist that skilled labor should be kept out of the country, it is to the interest of the community to firmly, persistently and indignantly oppose any such proposition.
The Athenians soon became sensible of the mischiefs attending this constitution, but being averse to the checking themselves by any rule or restriction, they resolved at least to check their demagogues or counselors by the fear of future punishment and inquiry.
You will become, with few exceptions, if possessed of sufficient talents and cunning, members of that most pernicious class of politicians called demagogues, who in fact have always proved the curse of every country wherein they have acquired political power.
A hasty lowering of the franchise would certainly increase that number, and thus while losing more votes of the peaceful and industrious citizens, we should be increasing those of the more turbulent, and of those who are excited by designing demagogues.
Simple-minded poets were celebrating atheism with an enthusiasm which seemed sincere; and, at the same time, men who are not simple-minded, journalists and demagogues, were laying hold of the irreligion as a lever with which to make a breach in the social edifice.
Such a person, whose mere presence in the executive chair of a constitutional country is itself "a high crime and misdemeanor," is of course the natural prey of demagogues, and he now appears to be surrounded by demagogues of the most desperate class.
That to the influence of disinterested statesmen succeeded, as the democracy accentuated itself, the tyranny of unscrupulous demagogues, is evidenced by the testimony, not only of the enemies of popular government, but by that of a democrat so convinced as Demosthenes.
Shall it be the influence of ignorance played upon by the sophistry of demagogues and helping to rebuild the vicious doctrines that have stood firmly for so many years, or the healthful influence of intelligent industry tending to our greatness and prosperity?
It was not without reason that Aristophanes, in common with all Athenians who loved and regretted the ancient times, regarded the sophistical circles with abhorrence, not only as seminaries of demagogues and sycophants, but as schools of impiety and licentiousness.
"Whilst the exploits of 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 to oblivion."
The foregoing extracts show that Shelley was in no sense an inflammatory demagogue; however visionary may have been the hopes he indulged, he based those hopes upon the still more Utopian foundation of a sudden ethical reform, and preached a revolution without bloodshed.
It seems that the evidence which shows the assassin to have been affiliated to demagogue societies is so complete and so obvious that the theory of insanity has been gradually abandoned, and that a more serious attempt is being made to penetrate these bloodstained mysteries.
They soon, by these arts, attached to themselves a large body of followers, violently inflamed with the prejudices which had been infused into their minds, and too boldly desperate to hesitate at any measures which should be recommended by their demagogues.
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, as fast as they arrived to attend the prohibited meeting.
In the first quarter of the century the working population, left pretty much to themselves, or given over to the tender mercies of political demagogues, were either stolidly indifferent to any improvement, or were kept in a constant turmoil of excitement and confusion.
The demagogues who are employed in the congenial sport of railroad baiting, and who are enjoying beyond measure the fun of chivying business interests into dusty corners, are the ones to lift up their voices in shrill appeal for the army of the unemployed.
Those who would do real service to the working classes are those who take up and expose the fallacies of living demagogues, by which the latter are misguided and led to injure themselves by strikes, combinations, and hostility to capital and machinery.
The alternative, the increasing despotism of the many, articulating through the voice of demagogues, resulting in the gradual extermination of the few and the highest, and in the imposition of values growing ever more false, points the way to decadence and barbarism.
Clay was chairman, which perfected the compromise measures of 1850, and took a leading part in their advocacy and adoption: a policy which, though often disturbed by demagogues of both parties since, has signally borne the test of the public judgment.
One sole cause has produced a decrease in the receipts, and that is the revolution of February; which, at first menacing society itself by the voice of democratic orators and the pens of demagogue writers, frightened away capital and annihilated industry of all kinds.
Alternately making appeals to popular passions in his capacity of high-born demagogue, or seeking crumbs of bounty as the supple slave of his sovereign, he was not more likely to acquire the confidence of the cardinal than he had done that of his predecessors.
The sure foundations of the 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 ruin.
Too ready to listen to the reckless harangues of irresponsible professional demagogues, wage earners were often as tyrannical as capitalists, insisting on impossible demands, rejecting sober compromise which, in the end, must be the basis of all amicable relations between employer and employed.
In a word, to use again the language of Aristotle, the pure wine of democracy is poured out to the people as it was by the demagogues to the Athenians; and from the quarter whence a remedy might have been expected there come only incitements to deeper intoxication.
They believe that when the hour comes for the revenge, London will rise as a man, and that Socialists, Nonconformists, Labor agitators, Anarchists, and demagogues will unite with us in one great national patriotic effort to exterminate our conquerors as we would exterminate vermin.
They were denounced by some as "lunatics," by others as dangerous and unworthy demagogues, because, as was charged, their constituents, if not themselves, were directly interested in the restoration of the ancient right of silver to full recognition as one of the money metals.
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 is in feeling one of the people, yet utterly innocent of the arts of the demagogue, and repudiating with firmness any attempt to bring him forward into political life, against the heats and confusion of which his modest and quiet character revolts.
Those meetings alleged to be held in the interests of the workingmen are attended mainly by tramps and loafers, fellows who couldn't be hired to do a day's honest work, and are addressed by professional demagogues who have no end but mischief in view.
It cannot do us harm to have our defects and shortcomings pointed out to us; but to be told by demagogues and declaimers that we are the greatest, the most enlightened, the most virtuous people which exists or has existed, can surely do us no good.
Farmers, mechanics and workingmen, we take this occasion to assure you that the slaveholders, the arrogant demagogues whom you have elected to offices of honor and profit, have hoodwinked you, trifled with you, and used you as mere tools for the consummation of their wicked designs.
Under the guidance of a great demagogue, Pericles, the chief official of the Athenian general assembly, and a politician statesman rather of the caliber of Gladstone or Lincoln in modern history, they were set to the task of rebuilding their city and expanding their commerce.
First, then, it is supposed that advocates of these systems are poor, worthless fellows, who adopt the arts of a demagogue for the promotion in some way of their own interests, perhaps in order to gain a livelihood by agitating laborers and preying upon them.
They were misled and corrupted by cunning and designing demagogues, while the government, which should have enforced submission to the laws when they had removed all just causes of complaint, remained passive, until the minds of the people were poisoned by false representations.
Everywhere men are losing faith in the causes they are supposed to represent; authority questions its own right to govern, democracy is rent with divisions, the ruling classes are abdicating in favor of unscrupulous demagogues, the ministers of religion barter their faith for popularity.
The man who kept his head kept a head full of fantastic nonsense; he was a writer of rowdy farces, a demagogue of fiction, a man without education in any serious sense whatever, a man whose whole business was to turn ordinary cockneys into extraordinary caricatures.
This malignant vice is not above the village gossip and the vile tongue of common slander, but it has been especially the method of gamblers in the most sacred social interests, and of demagogues trying to control the election of officers and legislators for our government.
The situation was very critical because the times were hard, many good reasons for discontent existed, thousands of workmen in every state were unemployed, and agitators and demagogues found ready response to their appeals in the hearts of men who were suffering from hunger.
They deplored the degeneracy of our political institutions, and argued from the circumstance that the voters of my district preferred "a hack politician" and "blatant demagogue" to "an educated philosopher" (the epithets are not mine) that we were going to the dogs as a nation.
If you could to-day assemble there all who join in this persecution, and if then you took from this assemblage all the Hoodlums, all the bar-room loafers, and all the political demagogues, I don't believe you would have a hundred men left on the ground.
An ambitious viceroy, surrounded by troops whose attachment and firmness could be relied on, might easily convert the palace into a citadel; and it was noted that Galvez, had upon various occasions played the demagogue among the military men who surrounded him in the capital.
It led to the reign of demagogues, and gave rewards, not to those who deserved promotion from their able and conscientious discharge of duty in public trusts, but to those who most unscrupulously and zealously advocated or advanced the interests of the party in power.
The novel points out the social complications of life, the influence of hereditary privileges and abuses, and how every attempt at reform is complicated by many interests, and is likely to fall into the hands of demagogues who use the workingmen for their own purposes.
Mine has been in endeavoring to screen every man, in every class, from oppression, and particularly in defending the high and eminent, who, in the bad times of confiscating princes, confiscating chief governors, or confiscating demagogues, are the most exposed to jealousy, avarice, and envy.
On one side he was hailed as a patriot, and on the other side he was hooted as a fraudulent demagogue; so that if everything that went in at one ear went out at the other, his head must have been a thoroughfare for every kind of vehicle of abuse and flattery.
The result is that those seeking reform and honesty in politics, in the main seek to accomplish their purposes by honest methods; while the demagogue, seeking his own interests alone, a hypocrite as to his motives, will never consider as to the honesty of his methods.
The lawless practices of the great combinations and their corrupting influence were extensively discovered and understood; but it became increasingly difficult for demagogues to convince the public that any good could accrue to anybody from the ruthless attempts to disintegrate all large combinations in business.
Our first impression at the aspect of this rivalry is the selfishness and greed of the Parisian demagogues; but we may easily convince ourselves that these could never have attained to so extended an activity if existing circumstances had not offered the possibility of a class war.
Gracchus however soon found, by experience, that a demagogue cannot stop where he would, however pure his intentions may be at first; and no sooner had he obtained a prolongation of his term of office, in opposition to the usual custom, than he fell a sacrifice to his undertaking.
And so Paul goes on to show that his preaching was not that of a demagogue or party-leader, but was a bare statement of fact, garnished and set off by absolutely nothing which could divert attention from the fact either to the speaker or to his style.
He had been led away by his own vanity, and by the flattery of artful demagogues, but the immense obstacles with which he had to contend in the Queen's wavering policy, and in the rivalry of both English and Dutch politicians have been amply exhibited.
It may be well, however, to have one part of our population comparatively free from the two dangerous influences of our time, riches and luxury on the one hand, and, on the other, embittered and ignorant combinations actuated by selfish interests and swayed too largely by demagogues.
These natural changes, from a monarchy, primitive and just and limited, to an oligarchy of nobles, and the gradual subversion of their power by wealthy and enlightened citizens, and then the rise of demagogues, who became tyrants, have been illustrated in all ages of the world.
One can readily see what a potent factor this sentiment against New England and other northern states people would be in the hands of political demagogues and sectarian priests seeking to exterminate what they would respectively consider an undesirable element in politics and a religious rival.
When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob.
Other critics have also barked along the trail of this distinguished man of destiny, charging him with being a demagogue, a jingoist, an infidel and the like, but their barking has made him all the greater, and has added new laurels to his marvelous career.
The people have yet to discover that the seeming throes of liberty are nothing but the breath of their masters, the demagogues; and that at the very moment when they are made to appear to have the greatest influence on public affairs, they really exercise the least.
As a consequence, the friendly relations which should exist between the two great Anglo-Saxon nations have been kept disturbed, and a systematic policy of twisting the lion's tail was pursued, not merely by the Fenian agitators, but by American demagogues anxious to cultivate the "Irish vote."
The incident now before us is one of the most instructive in all history, as an illustration of the usual sentiment, and strongest causes of error, prevalent among the Athenian democracy, and as a refutation of that exaggerated mischief which it is common to impute to the person called a demagogue.
That a few scientific writers and lecturers may have exemplified some of the most offensive features of the demagogue and the sophist cannot be denied, but we may not forget that many have attained to the consummate skill of the accomplished essayist and impressive and eloquent orator.
Mirabeau had sent the king some notes, a little violent in language, but well argued, on the necessity of preventing the usurpations of the Assembly ... when, on a question concerning the fleet, he delivered a speech suited only to a violent demagogue, enough to frighten all honest men.
The Memoirs of Hardenberg, the Prussian minister, which have since been published, prove that these accusations were not entirely the dreams of the demagogues; and that in order to promote peace the two courts did all in their power to adopt the same tone with each other.
By all means, let us move forward and upward, but let us proceed by the chart of reason, experience and tested American principles and doctrines, and let us not entrust our ship to demagogues, visionaries or shallow sentimentalists who most assuredly would steer it on the rocks.
At the very moment when he hoped to reap the fruit of his dissimulation and intrigues, he found himself unexpectedly confronted by the same fearless and enterprising demagogue, who, at the birth of the commonwealth, had publicly denounced his ambition, and excited the soldiery against him.
And while we call ourselves a civilized people, such empty minds, nursed with empty words, endeavor to confound literary men with demagogues, wisdom with ignorance, piety with hypocrisy, virtue with vice; and place into the asylums of lunatics every one, who would dare to contradict them.
The strength of the hero is as little his as the vulgarity of the demagogue: he possesses an intermediate kingdom of dreams, an isle of fantasy, where the air is drowsy with perfume, and the woods are bright with butterflies, and the long gorges run down to meet the sea.
On the declaration of the poll, Mr Turner, being shouted down by the crowd, addressed to the reporters the intimation that he "came forward for the first time to wrest the representation of the town from the greatest and most mischievous demagogue of the present century."
The ordinary demagogues, cast into the midst of a movement they could not comprehend, looked on with surprise at all these things; but, gradually yielding to the contagion of the hour, they imitated the bourgeoisie, and running about with bewildered countenances, shouted like others for the charter.
Its effects were pernicious and far-reaching, for when the colonies outgrew the bonds that linked them to Spain, their people, ignorant of the meaning of true liberty, and untrained in self-government, followed their instinct of blind submission to direction from above, and fell an easy prey to demagogues.
The deep-seated sedition, the fierce class and national hatreds that run through European life would have a very different intensity from what they now unfortunately have if they had not been artificially stimulated and fostered through purely selfish motives by demagogues, political adventurers and public writers.
To the Federalists they were dangerous intruders, groups of unprincipled demagogues organized for unpatriotic purposes, working in the dark, ashamed to stoop at nothing in the way of duplicity and subterfuge, of deception and intrigue, if by any means the vicious designs of their hearts could be furthered.
The demagogue, the over- punctilious gentleman, the faint lover, surely it must be reason wanting in the three for each of them in turn to lead the other, by an excess of some sort of the quality constituting their men's natures, to wreck a calm life and stand in contention!
From selfish ambition, from thoughtless zeal, from reckless partisanship, from the low motives governing demagogues in a country of universal suffrage, men are ever sowing the wind, thinking they can control the whirlwind; and the story of the Gironde and the Mountain has been related in vain.
With one of these orators 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 was his own landlord's son.
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.
She knew that her father held views as to this quite the opposite of those she had been vaguely groping toward, and while he treated her views with amused indulgence he considered the whole line of thought as the project of selfish demagogues, or, at best, of crack-brained doctrinaires.
Besides, some of the men who know better than to believe an unscrupulous demagogue, will vote for him, partly out of gratitude because he has amused them by his attacks on his opponents, partly because he is the party candidate, and partly as the result of a sort of mental contagion.
I rejoice to see them rushing to this land of liberty and independence; and it is because I am their friend that I denounce the demagogues who attempt to blind and mislead them to vote in the interests of any party against the interests of humanity, and the principles of true democracy.
Their wish was to do right, in the main; and though obnoxious to the charge of entertaining certain prejudices that rendered them peculiarly liable to become the dupes of a demagogue, they submitted to many of the better impulses, and were indisposed to be guilty of any act of downright injustice.
To have silenced the learned, and to have terrified the modest, is the barbarous triumph of a Hun or a Vandal; and the vaunted freedom of the literary republic departed from us when the vacillating public blindly consecrated the edicts of the demagogues of literature, whoever they may be.
The sensational school quite naturally produced the demagogic party, and the theological school became quite as naturally absolutism, safe to borrow from time to time the mask of the demagogue in order the better to reach its ends, as in philosophy it is by skepticism that it undertakes to restore theocracy.
In times of peace and prosperity the same men may be called to the councils of a nation without exciting great applause whilst the names of noisy demagogue politicians are carried over the world on the wings of venal partisan prints and held up as the conservators of the body politic.
And yet the want of attending to this obvious distinction has occasioned these doctrines, of absolute power in the prince and of national resistance by the people, to be much misunderstood and perverted by the advocates for slavery on the one hand, and the demagogues of faction on the other.
As to the demagogues who were responsible for the outbreak and its terrible consequences, they slunk out of the public eye, and the result of the battle at the mine seemed to have been a clearing up of the atmosphere, such as a thunderstorm effects at the close of a season of foul weather.
Now all these sums are to be paid by the people, "the dear people," whom our republican demagogues love so well, and for whom they spend their lives, rising early, toiling late, those self-denying heroes, those sainted martyrs of the republic, eating the bread of carefulness for them alone!
His words, of course, do not apply to the noisy demagogues, to the Freemasons, to the insurgents, at least to that part of them who have not been forced into revolt by threats and terrorism, but they describe the state of the millions as yet untouched by the rebellion.
Labor is so much depressed that some effectual remedy must be found, if the country is to remain without convulsion; and it is most important for us all that the remedy, which may finally be resorted to, should be a just and equitable one, not such as unscrupulous demagogues might apply.