The ordinary opinion of a vast number of poor, hard-working men on any matter concerning their own lives would be the most valuable opinion which it would be humanly possible to get on that subject, but the difficulty is to get that opinion. The men are too hard-working to be politicians, too poor to exercise power, so the democracy is run according to the pretensions of the educated who are incapable of seeing things as they are and follow the intellectual fads of the moment."

(Reported in the Montreal Gazette, Feb. 17, 1921)

(H/T Society of G.K. Chesterton)