Political Capacity

We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy, which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives.  Yet if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish playwright, Nobel laureate in Literature, Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory (1903)