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Demagogue   Listen
noun
Demagogue  n.  A leader of the rabble; one who attempts to control the multitude by specious or deceitful arts; an unprincipled and factious mob orator or political leader.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Demagogue" Quotes from Famous Books



... Silver heresy and of Bryan's hold on the popular imagination alarmed them; for it seemed to contradict the hope implied in Lincoln's saying that you can't fool all the people all the time. Here was a demagogue, who had been exposed and beaten four years before, who raised his head—or should I say his voice?—with increased effrontery and to an ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... so-called "Third party" prohibitionists, excited, at once, his indignation and contempt. He was one of the first prohibitionists of Kansas to distrust St. John, and to denounce him as a self-seeking, ambitious demagogue. He had no use for any man who was not entirely sincere, or who was not willing to subordinate his own personal interest ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler

... excitement. The people of this race know nothing of the word, perhaps; but they delight in the thing, quite as much as if they did nothing but electioneer all their lives. Most pliant instruments would their untutored feelings make in the hands of your demagogue; and, possibly, it may have some little influence on the white American to understand, how strong is his resemblance to the "nigger," when he gives himself up to the mastery of this much approved mental ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper

... same flowers of refinement will adorn the ballot box when she holds in her hand the sacred trust of franchise. Her life-long habit of house-cleaning will be carried to the dirty pool of politics, where the saloon is entrenched, and the demagogue and demijohn will be carted away to the ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... 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, ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson

... raised spoonful of milk and crackers into the bowl with a splash. "Dorn—he's a scoundrel!" he exclaimed, shaking with passion. "I'm going to have that dirty little paper of his stopped and him put out of town. Impudent puppy!—foul-mouthed demagogue! I'll ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... Peter's 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 ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... current of democracy is charming. She grew to regard Carlyle as 'one of the dissolvents of the age—as mischievous as his extravagances will let him be'; speaks of Kingsley and Maurice as 'pernicious'; and talks of John Stuart Mill as a 'demagogue.' She was no doctrinaire. 'One ounce of education demanded is worth a pound imposed. It is no use to give the meat before you give the hunger.' She was delighted at a letter of St. Hilaire's, in which he said, 'We have a system and no ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... to be admired for standing up to-day against that damned demagogue, Lewis Rand! No matter if he is defeated. Every gentleman applauds him. You women adore victory, but let me tell you, a vanquished Federalist is still the conqueror of any ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston

... decrees are like the others' edicts; their demagogues like the others' flatterers: but their greatest resemblance consists in the mutual support they give to each other, the flatterer to the tyrant, the demagogue to the people: and to them it is owing that the supreme power is lodged in the votes of the people, and not in the laws; for they bring everything before them, as their influence is owing to their being supreme whose opinions they entirely direct; for these ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle

... as the reader will remember, was the furious demagogue with the foul tongue and poisoned pen who edited the Pere Duchesne at the time of the first French Revolution. We had a revival of his politics and his journal in Paris during ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... 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

... director, manager, governor, rector, comptroller. superintendent, supervisor, straw boss;. intendant; overseer, overlooker[obs3]; supercargo[obs3], husband, inspector, visitor, ranger, surveyor, aedile[obs3]; moderator, monitor, taskmaster; master &c. 745; leader, ringleader, demagogue, corypheus, conductor, fugleman[obs3], precentor[obs3], bellwether, agitator; caporal[obs3], choregus[obs3], collector, file leader, flugelman[obs3], linkboy[obs3]. guiding star &c. (guidance) 693; adviser &c. 695; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... "He is a demagogue, a carbonaro," said the officer. "Who knows what confederates he may have even in this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... and coronet—the beadle in his gaudy livery of scarlet, and purple, and gold—the dignitary in the fulness of his pomp—the demagogue in the triumph of his hollowness—these and other visual and oral cheats by which mankind are cajoled, have passed in review before us, conjured up by the magic ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... more, my dear 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 movements; and politics, I trust, are very ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... meeting was not only the most respectable and the most numerous that they ever witnessed, but was composed of much the most intelligent, enlightened, and patriotic citizens in the world; now, forsooth, they were a despicable rabble, deluded and led away by that abominable demagogue, Hunt! The fact is, that the multitude are often taken by surprise, and an English political assemblage is not only the most peaceable, but the best natured body in the world. They often are misled for want of thought, ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt

... habeas corpus as a part of the British Constitution. He was a bold, able and profligate man, who marred great abilities by greater vices. He combined within himself all that is dangerous and detestable in a demagogue. ...
— School History of North Carolina • John W. Moore

... fact, what proportion of women would exercise the suffrage? Probably a very small one. The heaviest vote would be in the cities, as now, and the ignorant and unfit women would be the ready prey of the unscrupulous demagogue. Women do not hold a position inferior to men. In this land they have the softer side of life—the best of everything. There are, of course, exceptions—individuals—whose struggle in life is hard, whose husbands and fathers are tyrants instead ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.

... further darkened and degraded by the monstrous forms of vice and selfishness which the appliances of recent wealth, and of vulgar mechanical art, make possible to the million,—will soon bring us into a condition in which men will be glad to listen to almost any words but those of a demagogue, and to seek any means of safety rather than those in which they have lately trusted. So, with your good leave, I will say my say to the end, ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin

... from this adamantine pioneer. Such a man naturally arrogated and obtained great weight among his fellows, and perhaps his lack of vacillation furthered this preeminence. He was a good man in the main as well as forceful, but an early and a very apt expression of the demagogue. And as he tolerated amongst his mental furniture no illusions and fostered no follies, his home life harbored no fripperies. His domicile was a contrast to the better ordered homes of the station, but here one might have meat and shelter, and what more should mortal ask ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock

... prime minister and Tricoupi minister of foreign affairs; and, while the paralysis of utter failure rested on the Turkish administration in Crete, the policy in Greece became comparatively energetic and intelligent. Comoundouros was a demagogue, without any scruples as to the means of success, but he was intelligent enough to understand the position and that a positive policy was necessary. He had opposed any encouragement to the insurrection in the beginning, seeing no hope for its success; but public opinion all over Europe and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... movement and of words that have no sham meaning. It is all fun and sentiment. It is sufficient, for instance, to point out the attitude of the old French aristocracy towards the philosophers whose words were preparing the Great Revolution. Even in England, where you have some common-sense, a demagogue has only to shout loud enough and long enough to find some backing in the very class he is shouting at. You, too, like to see mischief being made. The demagogue carries the amateurs of emotion with him. Amateurism in this, that, ...
— A Set of Six • Joseph Conrad

... like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands: Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor—men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue And scorn his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty, and ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.

... could be more correct than the conduct of Virginius, or more creditable to a Roman father; but when he harangued in the Forum in after days, I doubt if the commons thronged so densely as to shut out from the demagogue a vision of fair hair dabbled in blood, gleaming awfully in the sunlight, and of dark-blue eyes turned upon him in a wondering horror till that look froze in them forevermore. I doubt if the cheers of his partisans were so noisy as to drown ...
— Sword and Gown - A Novel • George A. Lawrence

... 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, with the gift of attracting many people. A political opponent ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... The demagogue urges his rights to much that he cannot have in any conceivable form of society. Let him ask for free libraries, free baths, free music, and, above all, free and ample play-grounds within easy reach. I wonder that the rich who endow colleges do not ever think of creating play-grounds. ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... Prince Canino's Secretary, Masi; a young French monk of the order of Conventualists, Dumaine; Generals Durando and Ferrari; the journalist, Sterbini, afterwards so fatally popular; and, of course, the demagogue, Cicerruacho, who had been, at first, enthusiastic in the cause of the Pope, but who now burned for war, and, ere long, imparted to the revolution a character of fitful fanaticism and absurd sympathies. The day ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell

... nine hundred forty-five. Lloyd George was twenty-seven at the time of this triumph and became known as "the boy politician." There were many sneers among his opponents, who pointed out that this fluent young demagogue had now reached the end of his tether. In the environment of the House of Commons, among really clever men, he would sink to the natural inconsequence from which a series of fortunate accidents had lifted him. And indeed it was not unnatural ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot

... expression, from sudden gleams, that seemed to kindle with the burning impulses of his soul, to that cold and guarded steadiness, which was thought more peculiarly to become a chief in council. He took his seat, with the studied simplicity of a demagogue; though the keen and flashing glance, that he immediately threw around the silent assembly, betrayed the more predominant temper ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper

... ungenerous, and thoroughly convinced that the Republican party had a monopoly of loyalty, wisdom, and virtues, and that by any means it must gain and keep control; Boutwell, fanatical and mediocre; and Benjamin Butler, a charlatan and demagogue. As a class the Western radicals were less troubled by humanitarian ideals than were those of the East and ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming

... 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, But resolved, at least, to proceed ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... towards the zenith with those bright hues which are not seen there until some time after sunset, and when the horizon has quite lost its richer brilliancy. The moon, too, which had long been climbing overhead, and unobtrusively melting its disk into the azure,—like an ambitious demagogue, who hides his aspiring purpose by assuming the prevalent hue of popular sentiment,—now began to shine out, broad and oval, in its middle pathway. These silvery beams were already powerful enough to change the character of the lingering ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Madison; but in every parish 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

... and 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 ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... open insult to the flag, the Northern masses took fire, and the conflagration burned out the roots of sympathy for the South. Butler was given a command in the field; others of the same class were given commands, and the dangerous demagogue class was enlisted for ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James

... 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 and regulations of the Chicago Stock Yards are such as to ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 1, January 5, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... citizen becomes more and more servile, lazy and unambitious. Socialism is politically decadent and contains within itself the germ of self-destruction. During this process of self-destruction the people at large will offer a rich field for exploitation by the demagogue, the corrupt politician ...
— Socialism and American ideals • William Starr Myers

... "is fond of fishing in muddy waters" — hence it is, I suppose, that that grand demagogue has always been so fond of war — that sunshine and basking time of rogues, which calls them out, thick as May-day sun calls out the rattle-snakes from ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems

... minority! A favorite campaign song 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 ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds

... married when he was already in Parliament, and possessed of a small competence which had been the foundation of her husband's political position. On that modest sum he had held his ground; and upon it, while England was being stirred from end to end by his demagogue's gift, he had built up a personal independence and a formidable power which had enabled him to bargain almost on equal terms with the two ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... eloquence is far more than these the gift of nature. Lord Brougham's eloquence savors of the peculiar constitution of his mind. It is eminently adapted for educated men. He was never intended for a demagogue; for he never condescends to the art of pandering to the populace. His speeches are specimens of argumentative eloquence; and their only defect arises from his fertility of illustration. The extraordinary information he possesses has induced the habit of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... distinguished from the Constitution of Britain; and on these grounds I think subordination and liberty may be sufficiently reconciled through the whole,—whether to serve a refining speculatist or a factious demagogue I know not, but enough surely for the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... 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 say that an ignorant man's vote is as good as a sensible ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... "It's what most of the decent people in this country are thinking, I guess, even if they haven't begun saying it out loud yet. It strikes me the American people are a mighty patient lot—putting up with that demagogue. That was a rotten thing that happened up on the hill to-day, Quinlan—a damnable thing. Here was Mallard making the best speech in the worst cause that ever I heard, and getting away with it too. ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... his day 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 ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard

... of justice and benevolence in the public mind; mankind have within so much of the divine, are so self-disposed to do right, that they do not need much control, but may pretty safely be left to their own guidance. Nor is it left to the mere demagogue to talk thus. ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington

... had taken place in the people from various causes, became apparent in the raising to power of men from the lower walks of life, whose popularity was achieved and maintained mainly by intrigue and flattery. Chief among these rose Cle'on, a tanner, who has been characterized as "the violent demagogue whose arrogant presumption so unworthily succeeded the enlightened magnanimity of Pericles." In the year 428 Mityle'ne, the capital of the Island of Lesbos, revolted against the supremacy of Athens, but was speedily ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson

... 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

... gravel, 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

... orators of 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 ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift

... in the very centre of his first page; and 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 sensationally ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... the 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, but that of the coronation of the Empress; and when a critic accused ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand

... savage persecution of the nobles, the clergy, and all others whom they suspected of French sympathies. The ambition of Edward III came at length to their assistance; under the leadership of Jacques van Artevelde, a merchant-prince and demagogue of Ghent, they signed a treaty with the English King for the invasion and conquest of France (1339). It was a brief and ill-starred alliance, ruinous to Flemish trade and abruptly ended by the fall of Artevelde, whom his fellow-citizens tore limb from limb under the ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... demagogue, "I stood for those principles that have made us what we are and have endeared our Party to the great heart of the people. In a word I stood unflinchingly on the ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... below to consult with his coadjutors what was to be done. He cunningly had taken advantage of his chief's late want of success, to ingratiate himself with the people, and had employed all the ordinary arts of a demagogue to weaken the authority of the man he wished to supplant; and he now gave the answer to their message, with such exaggerations and alterations as he judged would best suit his purpose, and inflame the minds of his ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston

... dark and evil spirits of 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 crime or ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt

... told you fellows at the conference after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor insisted on signing it. I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in Hampton,—didn't I? I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and make all the other strikes we've had ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... evening met Wilkes. He did not know him by sight, and happening to fall into conversation with him, while the latter sat looking down, he said something in Wilkes's disparagement, on which the jovial demagogue looked up in his face, and burst out ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various

... bribe ready in 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. ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 5 of 8 • Various

... different passions. For a ruler's first end is to maintain his office, which is done no less by avoiding what is unfit than by observing what is suitable. Whoever is either too remiss or too strict is no more a king or a governor, but either a demagogue or a despot, and so becomes either odious or contemptible to his subjects. Though certainly the one seems to be the fault of easiness and good-nature, the other of ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... embellishments which his wanderings and exploits received from the exuberant poetry and the rude credibility of the age. During his absence, Menestheus, of the royal race of Attica, who, Plutarch simply tells us, was the first of mankind that undertook the profession of a demagogue, ingratiated himself with the people, or rather with the nobles. The absence of a king is always the nurse of seditions, and Menestheus succeeded in raising so powerful a faction against the hero, that on his return Theseus was unable to preserve himself in the government, and, pouring ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... to his level if you walk as his equal 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 ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon

... doing; who in the fullest belief that he was calling the people evoked the rabble, and grasped at the crown without being himself aware of it, until the inexorable sequence of events urged him irresistibly into the career of the demagogue-tyrant; until the family commission, the interferences with the public finances, the further "reforms" exacted by necessity and despair, the bodyguard from the pavement, and the conflicts in the streets betrayed the lamentable ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... sin to carry arms even in self-defence. But if the working genius dares to be true to his own class—to stay among them—to regenerate them—to defend them—to devote his talents to those among whom God placed him and brought him up—then he is the demagogue, the incendiary, the fanatic, the dreamer. So you would have the monopoly of talent, too, exclusive worldlings? And yet you pretend to believe in the miracle of Pentecost, and the religion that was taught by the carpenter's Son, and preached ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al

... you ever read of John Thorold—"Jack Thorold, the demagogue?" [GERTRUDE shakes her head.] I daresay not. John Thorold, once a schoolmaster, was my father. In my time he used to write for the two or three, so-called, inflammatory journals, and hold forth in small lecture-halls, occasionally even from the top of a wooden stool in the ...
— The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith • Arthur Wing Pinero

... the Democracy, disliked by the Whigs, and detested by the Tories, too much of a lawyer for the people, and too much of a demagogue for Parliament, a contestor of counties, and a Candidate for cities, the refuse of half the Electors of England, and representative at last upon sufferance of the proprietor of some rotten borough, which it would have been more independent to have purchased, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... silent, glancing furtively at me now and then, not knowing what to think. "How is it possible to win without them?" he finally said. "This demagogue Scarborough has set the people crazy. I can't imagine what possesses these men of property with interests throughout the country. ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips

... same: both exercise despotism over the better class of citizens; and decrees are in the one what ordinances and arrets are in the other: the demagogue, too, and the court favorite, are not unfrequently the same identical men, and always bear a close analogy; and these have the principal power, each in their respective forms of government, favorites with ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... it, above all the dire erection of English holiday array, as the face of an old but forgotten friend name Ezza. This youth had been a prodigy at college, and European fame was promised him when he was barely fifteen; but when he appeared in the world he failed, first publicly as a dramatist and a demagogue, and then privately for years on end as an actor, a traveller, a commission agent or a journalist. Muscari had known him last behind the footlights; he was but too well attuned to the excitements of that profession, ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... Scotland had been inflicted by England. The proudest events in Scottish history were victories obtained over England. Yet all angry feelings died rapidly away. The union of the nations became complete. The oldest man living does not remember to have heard any demagogue breathe a wish for separation. Do you believe that this would have happened if England had, after the Revolution, persisted in attempting to force the surplice and the Prayer Book on the Scotch? I tell you that, if you had ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... 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 ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... the prisoners caused great debate. It was on this occasion that the leather-seller Cleon first comes prominently forward in Athenian affairs. If we may trust the picture drawn by the comic poet Aristophanes, Cleon was a perfect model of a low-born demagogue; a noisy brawler, insolent in his gestures, corrupt and venal in his principles. Much allowance must no doubt be made for comic licence and exaggeration in this portrait, but even a caricature must have some grounds of truth for its basis. It was ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith

... however, some excuse for him. He had been several times candidate for city register, and hence was more anxious to secure votes than flour—be a popular demagogue rather than a ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... They hoped thus to enable their Legislature plausibly to resist Scarborough's demand for a revision of the laws—why revise when the cry of monopoly had been shown to be a false issue raised by a demagogue to discredit the tried leaders of the party and to aggrandize himself? And, when Scarborough had been thoroughly "exposed," business ...
— The Cost • David Graham Phillips

... 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 hardihood that made his ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge

... and worked together to remedy the crisis. A wealthy landholder and merchant-prince of Ghent, James van Artevelde, made himself the spokesman of all classes of that great manufacturing city. He was no demagogue nor artisan, though his eloquence and force had wonderful power over the impressionable craftsmen of the trading guilds. He was no Netherlandish patriot, as some moderns have imagined, though he was anxious to unite Flanders with her neighbour states, on the broad basis of their ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... Chamber. He was answered by "Blunderbuss" Pepper, the new Senator who had turned every aristocrat out of office in his aristocratic Southern State and filled the vacancies with men of his own humble origin. He was a burly untidy- looking man, and frequently as uncouth in speech, a demagogue and excitable. But the Senate, now that three years in that body had toned him down, conceded his ability and took his abuse with the utmost good-nature. Betty recalled his biography as sketched by Senator Burleigh, and noted that ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... political questions, Mr. Bryan followed a much more radical tendency than Mr. Wilson. His opponents call him a dishonest demagogue. I, on the contrary, would prefer to call Mr. Bryan an honest visionary and fanatic, whose passionate enthusiasm may go to make an exemplary speechmaker at large meetings, but not a statesman whose concern is the world of realities. He who in his enthusiasm believes ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff

... 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

... opportunity of making a sarcastic speech, and his hopes were elated by the prospect of enjoying a still larger share of the popular favour. Probably he felt certain that he should one day carry the city mace, like his ancient friend John Wilkes. The best way to crush a demagogue is to let him pass unnoticed. Notwithstanding, the offence of Tooke was a direct challenge to government, and if it had refused to notice such an insult, its authority might have been despised by the section he headed, and therefore ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... requested not to be interrupted again.) [Great applause.] I am no demagogue. Supposing you fail to meet the President in his policy, what will be the result? The convention has done its duty. It remains for you to elect men to the next legislature who will secure to the freedman his right. There are large republican majorities in the United States ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... writer, and as, a public speaker. His modesty, discretion, and industry were phenomenal, at once constituting him a leader of his race and rendering his leadership valuable. He eschewed politics, avoided in everything the demagogue's ways, and never spoke ill of the whites, not ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... But, though they did all that could be expected from active magistrates in procuring provisions, and distributing them to the poor: yet Spu'rius Mae'lius, a rich knight, who had bought up all the corn of Tuscany, by far outshone them in liberality. 21. This demagogue, inflamed with a secret desire of becoming powerful by the contentions in the state, distributed corn in great quantities among the poorer sort each day, till his house became the asylum of all such as wished to exchange ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... 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 ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske

... order and chaos. Real liberty, he 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. ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... degree of insight into the nature of the man who penned it. A whole chapter of intelligent speculation upon the character of Savonarola, based upon a study of externals, could not reveal as much of the mentality of that fanatical demagogue as the consideration ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... arose a scene: Manuel, the night before, pulled out of the water into a boat—raging, half-drowned, eloquent, inspired. The contemptible beast was inspired, as a politician is, a demagogue. He could sway his fellows, as I had heard enough to know. And I felt a slight chill on the warmth of my hope, because that bright sail, brilliantly and furtively dodging along in our wake, must be the product of Manuel's inspiration, urged to perseverance by the ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer

... speaks more eloquently of the total change of situation than the pity and respectful consideration extended at this time to O'Connell by men who only recently had exhausted every possibility of vituperation in abuse of the burly demagogue. In 1847 he resolved to leave Ireland, and to end his days in Rome. His last public appearance was in the House of Commons, where an attentive and deeply respectful audience hung upon the faultering and barely articulate accents which fell from his lips. In ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless

... the hot-tempered and lovable "demagogue," as he was called, with whom we were staying when Colonel Kelly and Captain Deasy, two Fenian leaders, were arrested in Manchester and put on their trial. The whole Irish population became seething with excitement, and on September 18th the police ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... of Cromwell, all men will readily and gratefully acknowledge. A work more valuable as a guide to the study of the singular and complex character of our pious revolutionist, our religious demagogue, our preaching and praying warrior and usurper, has not been produced. There is another portion of Mr Carlyle's labours which will not meet so unanimous an approbation. As editor, Mr Carlyle has given us a valuable work; as commentator, the view which he would teach us to take of English ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... Prussian officers clanked past along the sidewalk of this French city; despair he never dreamed of. As for dishonour—that is the cry of the pack, the refuge of the snarling mob yelping at the bombastic vociferations of some mean-souled demagogue; and in Paris there were many, and the pack howled in the Republic at the crack ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers

... believed in common honesty in public and private life; he was strict in all business obligations; he denounced the Homestead Act of 1868, and declared in his last days that there was "not a dirty shilling in his pocket." Mr. Toombs was nothing of the demagogue. He was highminded, fearless, and sincere, and it may be said of him what he afterward declared so often of Henry Clay, that "he would not flatter Neptune for his trident or Jove for his power to thunder." He was called upon at this ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... philosopher emasculating the German philosophy which he scrupled not to borrow; as the stylist perverting the pure English of Milton and Shakspeare into inflated, oracular Richterisms; and as the arch demagogue who, despising the people at heart, assigned no bounds to his ambition to gain their hearing and cajole them into the reception of ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst

... popularity of Burke when his predictions with regard to the French Revolution were realized. During all the years that have intervened since reconstruction days, the conservative has had as a resource for leadership his harking back to those days. The demagogue and the reactionary — enemies of the children of light — have always been able to inflame the populace with appeals to the memories and issues of the past. Such men have forgot ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims

... attempting to gloss over the crime of which both are guilty, without seeking to remove our disapprobation of this criminal love, he still, by the magic force of expression, contrives to excite in us a sympathy with their sorrow. In the insurrection of Cade he has delineated the conduct of a popular demagogue, the fearful ludicrousness of the anarchical tumult of the people, with such convincing truth, that one would believe he was an eye-witness of many of the events of our age, which, from ignorance of history, have been considered as ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel

... plots; and of the damper which such a spectacle puts on ambition. Clearly the lesson of moderation which he inculcates is for the first time sincerely given. The preacher, according to his own judgment for the time being, is no Frenchman, no demagogue, nothing but a simple Corsican anxious to live far from the madness of mobs and the emptiness ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... 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 ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude

... 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 ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various

... 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

... corned-beef, with a goodly tankard of beer. Mr. John Molyneux, although he was a great authority among English workmen generally, and especially among the trades-unionists of the North, had little about him of the appearance of the sleek-haired demagogue as that person is usually represented to us. He was a stout, yeoman-looking man, with a frosty-red face and short silver-white whiskers; he had keen, shrewd blue eyes, and a hand that gave a firm grip. ...
— Sunrise • William Black

... collected fine editions and was a patron of literature, paid blackmail to a heavy-jowled, black-browed boss of a municipal machine. This editor, who published patent medicine advertisements, called me a scoundrelly demagogue because I dared him to print in his paper the truth about patent medicines.* This man, talking soberly and earnestly about the beauties of idealism and the goodness of God, had just betrayed his comrades in a business deal. This man, a pillar of the church and heavy contributor to ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... Socialism has no scientific basis, unless we choose to call science a collection of fallacies expressed in involved terms so as to deceive the simple. Karl Marx was not a scientist but a professional demagogue and revolutionist, and his merit from the Socialists' point of view consists only in this, that he elaborated a formula of roundabout spoliation and general division, which he took from his Anarchist predecessors, ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... 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. We find in them, moreover, the germs of "The Revolt of Islam", ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds

... contribution to the equipment of citizens of a democracy who should solve their common problems in terms of the evidence presented. The unthinking acceptance of the words of the book or the statement of the teacher prepares the way for the blind following of the boss, for faith in the demagogue, or even for acceptance of the statements of ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy

... self-will, Henry was never blind to the distinction between what he could and what he could not do. Strictly speaking, he was a constitutional king; he neither attempted to break up Parliament, nor to evade the law. He combined in his royal person the parts of despot and demagogue, and both he clothed in Tudor grace and majesty. He led his people in the way they wanted to go, he tempted them with the baits they coveted most, he humoured their prejudices against the clergy and against the pretensions of Rome, and he ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard

... of that disagreeable talk about Hiram's estates which is now again prevalent in Barchester. Nevertheless, Mr Harding and Mr Bold are acquainted with each other; we may say, are friends, considering the great disparity in their years. Dr Grantly, however, has a holy horror of the impious demagogue, as on one occasion he called Bold, when speaking of him to the precentor; and being a more prudent far-seeing man than Mr Harding, and possessed of a stronger head, he already perceives that this John Bold will work great ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... the West. His sagacity had been caricatured as cunning; his presence of mind taken for vulgar audacity; he was held up as a half-educated debater, filled with a miserable self-sufficiency. He was attacked as a demagogue. The East held itself aloof from him in unctuous self-righteousness, because of his stand in the Mexican War. His fight for Oregon had aligned against him the friends of England in America. Yet men were in power because of him. A Whig had been elected President ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... which were 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

... the English against a standing army, as the only thing which could really be fatal to their laws and liberties. This passage was suppressed, no doubt, because it occurred to Pomponne and Torcy that, with whatever approbation the English might listen to such language when uttered by a demagogue of their own race, they might be very differently affected by hearing it from a French diplomatist, and might think that there could not be a better reason for arming, than that Lewis and his emissaries ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... fathers. With us, inherited wealth appears to be rather a detriment than an aid to political advancement of more than a petty kind. 'And yet,' you may say, 'your people are not always satisfied.' No advancing, upward-looking people is ever satisfied. With such a people, too, the demagogue is a natural product; and the demagogue period of this country is at hand. But there will never be a tom-fool revolution in this fair land. The people here know that when they have universal suffrage and majority rule they've pulled the last hair ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake

... for the individual, even when a wrong-doer, that we paid very little attention to the effectiveness of kings or sheriffs or what we had substituted for them. And so it is to-day. What candidate for office, what silver-tongued orator or senator, what demagogue or preacher could hold his audience or capture a vote if, when it came to a question of liberty, he should lift up his voice in behalf of the rights of the majority as against ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... in Leeds, with regard to the School Board election. We found that the cumulative vote in a large constituency was almost unworkable. It had resulted in Leeds in the election, at the head of the poll on one occasion, of a mere demagogue of no account. In order to obviate any further misfortune of this kind my friend Mathers, the honorary secretary of the Liberal Association, devised a plan under which the town was divided by the Liberals into different divisions. To each of these divisions ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... aspect of causation is greatly aided by Bain's analysis of any cause into a 'Moving or an Inciting Power' and a 'Collocation' of circumstances. When a demagogue by making a speech stirs up a mob to a riot, the speech is the moving or inciting power; the mob already in a state of smouldering passion, and a street convenient to be wrecked, are the collocation. When a ...
— Logic - Deductive and Inductive • Carveth Read

... clean-cut intaglios have been well described as "written in marble." He was a master of fine and solid prose. His Pericles and Aspasia consists of a series of letters passing between the great Athenian demagogue, the hetaira, Aspasia, her friend, Cleone of Miletus, Anaxagorus, the philosopher, and Pericles's nephew, Alcibiades. In this masterpiece the intellectual life of Athens, at its period of highest refinement, is brought before ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... 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 ...
— Industrial Biography - Iron Workers and Tool Makers • Samuel Smiles

... disciples, while in Matthew they are cast into the form of general propositions. In that shape, the additions were needed to prevent misunderstanding of Christ, as if He were talking like a vulgar demagogue, flattering the poor, and inveighing against the rich. Matthew's view of the force of the expressions is involved in Luke's making them an address to the disciples., 'Ye poor' at once declares that our Lord is not thinking of the whole class of literally needy, but of such ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... ascendancy, not the talents which usually appeal to the masses. He had not the advantage of an imposing presence, for he was short, slight, with blue eyes and bushy hair; in all things he was the opposite to a demagogue; he never beguiled, or flattered, or told others what he did not believe himself. But, on his side, he knew the people, whom most revolutionary leaders know not at all. 'That is my sole merit,' he used to say. It was that which enabled ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

... 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 most infallible ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington

... 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, ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg

... change, good or bad; the new police were distasteful to the people; above all, there was no Lord Mayor's show, and no man in brass armour to look at. The rioters assembled outside No. 62, Fleet Street, were there harangued by some dirty-faced demagogue, and then marched westward. At Temple Bar the zealous new "Peelers" slammed the old muddy gates, to stop the threatening mob; but the City Marshal, red in the face at this breach of City privilege, re-opened them, and the mob roared approval from a thousand distorted mouths. The more pugnacious ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... expressed. A man may be unfit for office from lack of capacity, and dangerous on account of his principles. The most rigid construction of the Code of Honor has never compelled a person to fight every fool whom he thought unworthy of public station, and every demagogue whose views he considered unsound. If Dr. Cooper, then, was able to discover a despicable opinion where most people could find none, might he not have seen what he called a more despicable opinion in some remark equally ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reasons to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which ...
— On the Duty of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... requisite everywhere—its visible effects in the soul being Justice and Wisdom, not Riot. To prevent injustice some art is needed to make the subject as like as possible to the ruler; the type of life a man leads is far more important than length of days. The demagogue who like Callicles has no credentials makes the people morally worse, especially as they are unable to distinguish quacks from wise men. Nor need philosophers trouble much about men's opinions, for a mob always blames the physician who wishes to save it. A delightful piece of irony follows, ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb

... difficult to 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 Fitz-osbert, 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 ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay

... time the rich senators had grown highly alarmed. Here was a new Gracchus in the field, as eloquent and as eager for reform as his brother, and who was daily growing more and more in favor with the people. Something must be done at once, or this new demagogue—as they called him—would do them more harm than that for which they ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... injustice to the English, whom they branded universally as a race of purse-proud arrogant epicures. Such seeds of national dislike remained between the two countries, the natural consequences of their existence as separate and rival states. We have seen recently the breath of a demagogue blow these sparks into a temporary flame, which I sincerely hope is now extinguished in its ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... own riper style quite discredits it; though I have to confess that, but for his teachings, we might not so well have known of any thing better. Now contrast with the foregoing one of the hero's speeches in Coriolanus, iii. 2, where his mother urges him to play the demagogue, and practise smiles ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... their soldiers; discipline will become relaxed, and the basest instead of the noblest passions of the troops be appealed to. We may have civil wars again, like those of Marius and Scylla, and Anthony and Brutus. I hate the intrigues of Rome, and loathe the arts of the demagogue, and to this our generals will descend. Therefore I shall soon apply for service in Britain again. Muro approves, and when I obtain an office there he will come out and build another villa, and settle and ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... not, and never became, very conversant. He had also other gifts and other propensities. He could talk in a manner dangerous to himself and others; he could persuade without knowing that he did so; and being himself an extreme demagogue, in those noisy times just prior to the Reform Bill, he created a hubbub in Barchester of which he himself had ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope

... and that she would not speak to him. Gertrude, meanwhile, was giving short answers to Erskine and listening to Trefusis. She had gathered from the domestic squabbles of the last few days that Lady Brandon, against her husband's will, had invited a notorious demagogue, the rich son of a successful cotton-spinner, to visit the Beeches. She had made up her mind to snub any such man. But on recognizing the long-forgotten Smilash, she had been astonished, and had not known what to do. So, to avoid ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw

... the danger that the nation has most to apprehend. The result is as plain as it is lamentable. In effect, it throws the political power of the entire Republic into the hands of the intriguer, the demagogue, and the knave. Honest men are not practised on by such combinations; but, with a fatality that would seem to be the very sport of demons, there they stand, drawn up in formidable array, in nearly equal lines of open and deriding hostility, leading ...
— New York • James Fenimore Cooper

... shown to his family, had always sent to Parliament some useful and distinguished man who without such patronage might have been unable to serve his country. On the present occasion a friend of the people,—so called,—an unlettered demagogue such as is in England in truth distasteful to all classes, had taken himself down to Quinborough as a candidate in opposition to the nobleman's nominee. He had been backed by all the sympathies of the American Senator who knew nothing of him or his unfitness, ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope

... right. I see it all now, even as you speak; and what hope had we from the first? Who was the demagogue Flaminius that he should command our army, going forth without the auspices—a consul that was no consul at all in the sight of the gods! Then, too, there were the warnings that poured in from all the country: the ships in the sky, the crow ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne

... with the fist, he is one of those large, but somewhat coarse-grained natures, that influence rude populations by having so much in common with them, and in which the piety of the Christian, the thought of the Protestant, and the zeal of the martyr are curiously blended with the ferocity of the demagogue. Jenny Geddes, at the time when Archbishop Laud attempted to force Episcopacy upon Scotland, is a fair specimen of the kind of character which the teachings and the practice of such a man would tend to produce in a nation. This rustic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various

... the demagogue 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 ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... "A low demagogue!" cried Mrs. Galloway. "I hear there have been disturbances in Boston, and that because one James Otis has been beaten by our officers, and because our bands play 'Yankee Doodle' on Sundays in front of ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... willing to elect mayors of native blood; but one of these, elected and reelected to the town's lasting harm, might as well have been of the newer, and wholly exterior, tradition: a genial, loose-lipped demagogue who saw an opportunity to weld the miscellany of discrepant elements into a compact engine for the furtherance of his own coarse ambitions, and who allowed his supporters such a measure of license as was needed to make their support continuing. A shameless new quarter suddenly obtruded itself ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller

... can be so handled by an adroit demagogue as easily to confound the distinction between liberty and lawlessness in the minds of ignorant persons, accustomed always to be influenced by the sound of certain words, rather than to reflect upon ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... where the Sheikh has a town-house, and the other in the country districts. He has, besides, four or five sons. I saw one of them, who was as much of an aristocrat as his father. The merchants assured me that Jabour's influence, more especially as he is a marabout, although he is no demagogue priest of the Higgins' calibre, is unbounded. "With a slave of Jabour," they declared, "you may go to Timbuctoo, and all parts of Sahara." The Sheikh himself does not visit the neighbouring countries. This is not the custom of the Touaricks, the ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... Fur-collared coats were 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

... 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 ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... were about to terminate with a show of hands, when a tall, brawny elector in the middle of the hall suddenly arose, and said he had some questions to put. A thrill ran through the assembly, for this elector was the demagogue of the Yellows,—a fellow whom it was impossible to put down, a capital speaker, with lungs of brass. "I shall be very short," said the demagogue. And therewith, under the shape of questions to the two Blue candidates, he commenced ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... uninstructed youth, and without the opportunity of rising higher; and a great mass of men who hewed wood and drew water, not for a master, but for themselves, {17} submissive to the church, and well-disposed, but ignorant, and at the mercy of any clever demagogue who might raise the cry of nationalism. Still, when nationality remained unchallenged, the French-Canadians were at least what, till recently, they remained, the most ...
— British Supremacy & Canadian Self-Government - 1839-1854 • J. L. Morison

... 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 new Governor-General ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... Eastern reader suggests that it argues a lack of public spirit in the decent part of the community to allow the roughs to rule in this matter, I take leave to remind him of the time, not very long ago, when the same combination of Hoodlum and demagogue mobbed negroes in New York, and threatened vengeance if colored people were allowed to ride in the street-cars. Here, as there then, there are unfortunately newspapers which ignorantly pander to this vile class, and help to swell the cry of persecution. ...
— Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands • Charles Nordhoff

... 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

... Capital, but whose heirship depended entirely on 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 ...
— Ralph the Heir • Anthony Trollope

... 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 ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman

... a time like this demands Strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands. Men whom the lust of office cannot kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor; men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue, And brave his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog, In public duty and in private thinking; For while the rabble, with its thumb-worn creeds, Its large professions, and its ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For • Various

... true faith, and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoil of office does not buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor, men who will not lie; Men who can stand before a demagogue, And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking! Tall men, sun crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and ...
— Supreme Personality • Delmer Eugene Croft

... 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, as fast as they arrived to attend the prohibited ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... and ready hands; Men whom the lust of office does not kill; Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy; Men who possess opinions and a will; Men who have honor—men who will not lie. Men who can stand before a demagogue And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking; Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog In public duty and in private thinking; For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds, Their large professions and their ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... not his anger, but a clearheaded certainty that something must be done. Something always had to be done to block Weedon Moore. It had been so in the old days when Moore was not dangerous: only dirty. Now he was debasing the ignorant mind. He was a demagogue. The old never-formulated love for Addington came back to Jeff in a rush, not recognised as love an hour ago, only the careless affection of usage, but ready, he knew, to spring into something warmer when her dear old bulwarks were assailed. You don't usually ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... bet I know!" shouted the demagogue. "How about taxes? I'm paying more to-day on my little farm out back there than you're paying on a whole township of your wild lands. And don't you suppose I know ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day

... mitigated by the reflection that it would not require a deluge of gore to reach the knees of such a Zacchaeus as Roebuck. "Pretty wicious that for a child of six!" said the amiable Mr. Squeers on one occasion; and pretty sanguinary that, say we, for a rising little demagogue ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... convention, no one thinking he has enough until he has all, and that nobility of station has no absolute connexion with nobleness of spirit or of conduct; if we confide all to one, indolence, favouritism, and indeed the impossibility of supervision, throws us again into the hands of the demagogue, in his new, or rather true character of a courtier. So it is with life; in politics, religion, arms, arts and letters, yea, even the republic of letters, as it is called, is the prey of schemes and parasites, and things in fact, are very different ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper

... the 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, nor did he fear to ally ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... font with its archaic carving and the fifteenth-century crucifix over the west door should be noticed. Upavon was the home of a kindred spirit to Cobbett, for here was born the once famous "Orator Hunt," farmer and demagogue—rare combination! He was chairman of the meeting in Manchester that had "Peterloo" as its sequel. Near Upavon, but down stream, is the small and ancient manor house of Chisenbury, until lately the property of the Groves, one of whose ancestors suffered death for his participation in the rising ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes

... 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 decrees of the people override the laws, and refer ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... consumed in supplies. The longer they remain in this desirable service the deeper they will fall in debt—a burlesque injustice in a new country, where labour should be precious, and one of those typical instances which explains the prevailing discontent and the success of the demagogue Kearney. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... it comfort to deny oneself everything till our rags fall off our bodies, and we are taken by the soldiers as criminals? Take heed. The governors at Caesarea and Jerusalem are displeased at the state of affairs. They mean to put a stop to the demagogue's proceedings, ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger

... the nations' friendly gods Went up from the fellowly shrines, No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum In the Age of the Antonines! The sting was not dreamed to be taken from death, No Paradise pledged or sought, But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast, Nor stifled the fluent thought, We sham, we shuffle while faith declines— ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... 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



Words linked to "Demagogue" :   demagog, pol, political leader, politician, rabble-rouser



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