Quotes About Majority

September 9, Washington had had enough. "If the laws are to be trampled upon with impunity," he said, "and a minority is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government.

nuestros prejuicios nos encierran, nos achican la cabeza, nos idiotizan; y cuando estos prejuicios coinciden, como suele suceder, con la convención mayoritaria, nos convierten en cómplices del abuso y la injusticia, como en el caso de Wilde.

You must not obey a majority, no matter how large, if it opposes your principles and opinions.' He said this to each new volunteer and repeated it over and over to him, until it was engraved on his mind. 'The largest majority is often only an organized mob whose noise can no more change the false into the true than it can change black into white or night into day. And a minority, conscious of its rights, if those rights are based on moral principles, will sooner or later become a just majority.

True decadence wasn't anything carnal; it was about sacrificing the powerless minority for the sake of the majority.

People who dislike budging from their homes or walking beyond their own backyards--and they are always and everywhere in the majority--treat Herodotus' sort, fundamentally unconnected to anyone or anything, as freaks, fanatics, lunatics even.

Truth always rests with the minority … because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion" – Soren Kierkegaard

Part of our challenge is to galvanize and organize this silent majority against jihadism so that it can start challenging the narrative of violence that has been popularized by the organized minority currently dominating the discourse.

The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

The majority is the best way, because it is visible, and has strength to make itself obeyed. Yet it is the opinion of the least able.

The whole strength of England lies in the fact that the enormous majority of the English people are snobs.

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.

Now, these eager and apprehensive men of small property constitute the class which is constantly increased by the equality of conditions. Hence, in democratic communities, the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one.

the advantage of democracy is not, as has been sometimes asserted, that it protects the interests of the whole community, but simply that it protects those of the majority.

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the unlimited authority of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have been brought about by despotism.

The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less glorious, and perhaps less strong; but the majority of the citizens will enjoy a greater degree of prosperity, and the people will remain quiet, not because it despairs of amelioration, but because it is conscious of the advantages of its condition.

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the welfare of the greatest possible number; for they emanate from the majority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who cannot have an interest opposed to their own advantage. The laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of the minority, because an aristocracy, by its very nature, constitutes a minority.

I regard as impious and detestable the maxim that in matters of government the majority of a people has the right to do everything, and nevertheless I place the origin of all powers in the wishes of the majority. Am I in contradiction with myself? There exists a general law which has been made, or at least adopted not only by the majority of this or that people but by the majority of all men. This law is justice. Justice thus forms the limit to the right of each people.

In America the majority raises very formidable barriers to the liberty of opinion: within these barriers an author may write whatever he pleases, but he will repent it if he ever steps beyond them.

If, instead of all the diverse powers which excessively hindered or slowed down the flight of reason of the individual, democratic nations substituted the absolute power of a majority, only the character of this social ill would have been changed. Men would not have achieved the means of living independently; they would simply have lighted upon—a difficult enough task in itself—a new face of enslavement.

We always hear about the scandals of the few, but what of the goodness of the majority?

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

History does not forbid us to hope. But it forbids us to rely upon numbers; they will be against us. If history teaches anything worth learning it teaches that the majority of mankind is neither good nor wise. When government is founded upon the public conscience and the public intelligence the stability of states is a dream.

The Republican majority will stop at nothing to prevent access to the legal system for those who are hurt.

I believe all Americans are born with certain inalienable rights. As a child of God, I believe my rights are not derived from the constitution. My rights are not derived from any government. My rights are not denied by any majority. My rights are because I exist. They were given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our creator, and they represent the essence of human dignity.