A democracy is a form of government in which the people decide policy matters directly through town hall meetings or by voting on ballot initiatives and referendums. A republic, on the other hand, is a system in which the people choose representatives who, in turn, make policy decisions on their behalf. The Framers of the Constitution were altogether fearful of pure democracy because you have no rights or civil liberaties but privileges that government allows.

"Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%." - President Thomas Jefferson.

"When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." - Benjamin Franklin.

"We are a Republican Government, Real liberty is never found in despotism or in the extremes of democracy...it has been observed that a pure democracy if it were practicable would be the most perfect government. Experience has proved that no position is more false than this. The ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated never possessed one good feature of government. Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity." - Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton.

"Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." - President John Adams.

"Democracy was the right of the people to choose their own tyrant." - President James Madison.

They limit it's power