"Democracy could not function if politics and the state of the social order were always on everyone’s mind."

“Democracy requires the occasional political participation of most of its citizenry some of the time, and a moderate and dim perceptiveness — as if from the corner of the eye — the rest of the time. It could not function if politics and the state of the social order were always on everyone’s mind. If most men, most of the time, regarded themselves as their brother-citizens’ keepers, freedom, which flourished in the indifference of privacy, would be abolished, and representative institutions would be inundated by the swirl of plebiscitary emotions — by aggressiveness, acclamation and alarm.”

~ Edward Shils from his 1956 book The Torment of Secrecy [hat tip Lee Siegel]