Don't Shove

[Democracy] is the line that forms on the right.  It is the don't in don't shove.  It is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles, the dent in the high hat.  Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.  It is the feeling of privacy in the voting booths, the feeling of communion in the libraries, the feeling of vitality everywhere.

Democracy is the letter to the editor.  Democracy is the score at the beginning of the ninth.  It is an idea which hasn't been disproved yet, a song the words of which have not gone bad.

-- Elwyn Brooks (E.B.) White (11 July 1899 - 1 October 1985), American essayist, columnist, poet, and editor, best known today for his work in a writers' guide, The Elements of Style, and for three children's books: Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan, generally regarded as classics, The New Yorker (3 July 1943)