Democracy Minority Quotes

#1. 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

#2. With growing and intermixed minority populations, our democracy can not work optimally unless all people are integrated as full and equal members, and I think our collective freedom requires that.

Richard Benjamin

#3. 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

#4. An American parliamentary system with proportional representation wouldn't immediately or inexorably lead to a flourishing social democracy, but it would at least correct the overrepresentation of an ideological minority and cut down on intentional tactical economic sabotage.

Alex Pareene

#5. [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

#6. Democracy's real test lies in its respect for minority opinion.

Ellery Sedgwick

#7. Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich
that is the democracy of capitalist society.

Vladimir Lenin

#8. 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

#9. 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

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

G.K. Chesterton

#11. 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

#12. I think 'one man, one vote,' just unrestricted democracy, would not be wise. There needs to be some kind of protection for the minority which the white people represent now, a minority, and they need and have a right to demand a protection of their rights.

Pat Robertson

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

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

Albert Camus

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

Edmund Burke

#18. 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

#19. From the earlier discussion of Europe in the nineteenth century, however, it should be clear that the middle classes are not inevitably supporters of democracy. This tends to be particularly true when the middle classes still constitute a minority of the population.

Francis Fukuyama

#20. You have fewer rights because you are a minority. Absolutely, that's how democracy works.

Jacob Zuma

#21. 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

#22. The minority must have involvement in society. You can have different cultural practices that you accept. But if you are going to adopt democracy in government, then the government itself must allow the minority to be heard.

Sheila Jackson Lee

#23. 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

#24. The right of a minority is so important in a democracy.

Robert Caro

#25. 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

#26. And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed

Lee Harvey Oswald

#27. Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.

Harlan Stone

#28. For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.

Noam Chomsky

#29. For the South African White minority, neo-liberalism is apartheid with a clean conscience, called Democracy.

Arundhati Roy