Democracy Majority Quotes

#1. Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

G.K. Chesterton

#2. The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

#3. In a democracy, there is no check against despotism, because the principle of democracy is supposed to be itself a check. But it guarantees only that the majority will not be despotically ruled.

B.F. Skinner

#4. [Proportional representation is a] device for defeating democracy, the principle of which was that the majority should rule, and for bringing faddists of all kinds into Parliament, and establishing groups and disintegrating parties.

David Lloyd George

#5. Not only does free trade have nothing to do with democracy, but in most cases throughout history the two have been inimical. Free trade prospered only at the expense of democracy and the freedom of the majority.

Michael Hogan

#6. The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

Gore Vidal

#7. In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
Aristotle

Cornel West

#8. Federalism is the best curb on democracy. [It] assigns limited powers to the central government. Thereby all power is limited. It excludes absolute power of the majority.

Lord Acton

#9. And where else will [Hume,] this degenerate son of science, this traitor to his fellow men, find the origin of just powers, if not in the majority of the society? Will it be in the minority? Or in an individual of that minority?

Thomas Jefferson

#10. It is when it is contended that "in a democracy right is what the majority makes it to be" that democracy degenerates into demagoguery.

Friedrich August Von Hayek

#11. Democracy is an experiment, and the right of the majority to rule is no more inherent than the right of the minority to rule; and unless the majority represents sane, righteous, unselfish public sentiment, it has no inherent right.

William Allen White

#12. [N]o one's ever been able to show me any difference between democracy and brute force. It's just a majority ganging up on a minority with the minority giving in to avoid getting massacred.

L. Neil Smith

#13. The only way back toward a democracy and economy that work for the majority is for most of us to get politically active once again, becoming organized and mobilized.

Robert Reich

#14. For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights.

David Novak

#15. It's a democracy and if I am outvoted, I have to accept the majority decisions.

Moshe Dayan

#16. It is my principle that the will of the majority should always prevail.

Thomas Jefferson

#17. I think it is a simple statement of principle that in a democracy you should make your MPs work harder for your vote and try and get at least majority support in their local area, and that in a nutshell is what AV does.

Nick Clegg

#18. Democracy meant all men were to be heard, and a decision was taken together as a people. Majority rule was a foreign notion. A minority was not to be crushed by a majority.

Nelson Mandela

#19. Under a system in which no single question is submitted to the electorate for direct decision, an ardent minority for or against a particular measure may often count for more than an apathetic majority.

Patrick, Baron Devlin

#20. Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.

John Simon

#21. Democracy with its semi-civilization sincerely cherishes junk. The artists power should be spiritual. But the power of the majority is material. When these worlds meet occasionally, it is pure coincidence.

Paul Klee

#22. Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator, that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. Best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and government would prevent any economical growth.

Pentti Linkola

#23. A democracy exists whenever those who are free and are not well-off, being in the majority, are in sovereign control of government, an oligarchy when control lies with the rich and better-born, these being few.

Aristotle.

#24. The American Jews are liberal en masse because the 'Bill Of Rights' guarantees for them (through their evolutionist Justices) to keep the majority and their 'Democracy' in check.

Ibrahim Ibrahim

#25. I am convinced that the majority of American people do understand that we have a moral responsibility to foster the concepts of opportunity, free enterprise, the rule of law, and democracy. They understand that these values are the hope of the world.

Richard Lugar

#26. [D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.
-William F Buckley

William F. Buckley Jr.

#27. In a racially divided society, majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy.

Lani Guinier

#28. Sense isn't democratic. A senseless opinion that's advocated by 'the majority' is still senseless.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#29. In a democracy there is a centralization of governmental power in a simple majority.

Robert W. Welch Jr.

#30. Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

George Will

#31. The majority of the world's Muslims do not believe that terrorism is a legitimate strategy or that Islam is incompatible with democracy.

Gijs De Vries

#32. Democracy has turned out to be not majority rule but rule by well-organized and well-connected minority groups who steal from the majority.

Llewellyn Rockwell

#33. Democracy is premised, in some measure, on majority rule, and democracy is difficult in a situation of concentrated inequalities in which a large, impoverished majority confronts a small, wealthy oligarchy.

Samuel P. Huntington

#34. Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen.

Ray Bradbury

#35. In a democracy sovereignity is vested in a majority; and a majority is not only, at best, an ignorant, foolish and emotional mob, but shifts continually and alters from year to year.

Jean Bodin

#36. Rather than signalling the aspiration for system of checks and balances against absolute power, democracy become a euphemism for majority rule.

Peter Mansfield

#37. Democracy is not perfect. It is an imperfection that the majority choose to support.

Debasish Mridha

#38. 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.

Blaise Pascal

#39. Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

Thomas Jefferson

#40. Democracy is the spawn of despotism. And like father, like son. Democracy is power and rule. It's not the will of the people, remember; it's the will of the majority.

B.F. Skinner

#41. Perhaps the best known, and certainly the most vaunted, "discovery" of modern public opinion research is the indifference and ignorance of a majority of the electorate in western democracies.

Moses Finley

#42. The majority is by no means omniscient just because it is the majority. In fact, I've found that the line which divides majority opinion from mass hysteria is often so fine as to be virtually invisible.

J. Paul Getty

#43. Money originated with royalty and slavery, it has nothing to do with democracy or the struggle of the empoverished enslaved majority.

Aristotle.

#44. Congress is functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended-not very well. They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority.

Barber Conable

#45. Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process.

Debbie Stabenow

#46. Democracy means that if this man,you Miss and I will be trapped on an island, we having a majority of votes will decide that you have to sleep with us. That's the Democracy. And with 2/3 votes we can even put that in the constitution.

Janusz Korwin-Mikke

#47. That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the world.

John Adams

#48. People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.

Walter Judd

#49. You have the army of mediocrities followed by the multitude of fools. As the mediocrities and the fools always form the immense majority, it is impossible for them to elect an intelligent government.

Guy De Maupassant

#50. I guess 35 years ago, I thought we had more of a democracy than we actually do. Majority support doesn't help unless the majority is active and votes - but the opposition minority votes a much greater proportion, so we often lose by a narrow margin.

Gloria Steinem

#51. The essence of constitutionalism in a democracy is not merely to shape and condition the nature of majorities, but also to stipulate that certain things are impermissible, no matter how large and fervent a majority might want them.

George Will

#52. We can't slow up because of our love for democracy and our love for America. Someone should tell Faulkner that the vast majority of the people on this globe are colored.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#53. The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions.

Lucy Stone

#54. We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.

Thomas Jefferson

#55. Democracy is the antithesis of liberty. The foundation and cornerstone of liberty is private property and majority rule is thus logically incompatible with this.

Daniel Alexander Brackins

#56. By rejecting the authority of the individual and replacing it by the numbers of some momentary mob, the parliamentary principle of majority rule sins against the basic aristocratic principle of Nature ...

Adolf Hitler

#57. The principle of democracy is all about delegation of power by the vast majority of citizens through a few chosen representatives chosen on merit and competence.

N. R. Narayana Murthy

#58. 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.

Alexis De Tocqueville

#59. We know that a large majority of the Australian society is extremely comfortable with a multicultural society, that we accept that living in a democracy means having a freedom to practise your religion within the limits of the law.

Tim Soutphommasane

#60. As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.

Norman Granz

#61. If, in a democracy, the cognition of the majority is not much better than the cognition of the sheep, democracy will surely fail.

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#62. In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.

Carter G. Woodson

#63. Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.

Nelson Mandela

#64. The instinct of worship is still so strong upon us that, having nearly worn out our capacity for treating kings and such kind of persons as sacred, we are ready to invest a majority of our own selves with the same kind of reverence.

Auberon Herbert

#65. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it ... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'.

Robert A. Heinlein

#66. It's characteristic of democracy that majority rule is understood as being effective not only in politics but also in thinking. In thinking, of course, the majority is always wrong.

Joseph Campbell

#67. Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.

Mary Parker Follett

#68. The form of government is a democracy when the free, who are also poor and the majority, govern, and an oligarchy when the rich and the noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.

Aristotle.

#69. Democracy was a terrifying concept for the old world of Europe, and even the new world of North America, where income inequality was rife. The finest minds of the nineteenth century warned against giving the vote to the workingman, for fear of mob rule or the tyranny of the majority.

George Megalogenis

#70. If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose.

Peter Singer

#71. The majority in a democracy has no more right to tyrannize over a minority than, under a different system, the latter would to oppress the former.

Theodore Roosevelt

#72. If the measures which have been pursued are approved by the majority, it is the duty of the minority to acquiesce and conform.

Thomas Jefferson

#73. A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one ...

Mary Parker Follett

#74. For monarchy to work, one man must be wise. For democracy to work, a majority of the people must be wise. Which is more likely?

Charles Maurras

#75. The will of a majority is the will of a rabble. Progressive democracy is incompatable with liberty.

John C. Calhoun

#76. If there is a rotten government in a democracy, the main reason for this is that there is a rotten majority over there!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#77. Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.

Albert Camus

#78. The majority of Arab people see the United States and Israel (definitely not Iran or Syria) as the greatest danger to the world. Could you imagine what the Arab people would do if true democracy (rule of the people) were to be victorious?

Andre Vltchek

#79. I am very worried about this concentration of power, and it's not only because of Erdogan. We have the ballot box, but we don't have the culture of democracy. The government says: You see, we have the majority, we're entitled to do anything we want. But that's not democracy, that's majoritarianism.

Elif Safak

#80. When majority is insane, sane must go to asylum.

Mark Twain

#81. In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

Edmund Burke

#82. Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)

Cornel West

#83. Democracy, which began by liberating man politically, has developed a dangerous tendency to enslave him through the tyranny of majorities and the deadly power of their opinion.

Ludwig Lewisohn

#84. Being democratic is not enough, a majority cannot turn what is wrong into right. In order to be considered truly free, countries must also have a deep love of liberty and an abiding respect for the rule of law.

Margaret Thatcher

#85. [In a democracy] a common passion or interest will, in almost every case , be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert results from the form of government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party or an obnoxious individual.

James Madison

#86. A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.

Vladimir Lenin