Top 28 The Tyranny Of The Majority Quotes
#1. 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
#2. [The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government.
Laurence Tribe
#3. 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
#4. Of all tyrannies a country can suffer, the worst is the tyranny of the majority.
William Inge
#5. 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
#7. It is of great importance in a republic, not only to guard the society against the oppression of its rulers; but to guard one part of the society against the injustice of the other part.
James Madison
#8. [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.
#9. More pernicious than the power of a dictator is that of a class; the most terrible - the tyranny of a majority.
Emma Goldman
#10. The tyranny of a majority can be just as cruel as the tyranny of a single dictator, depending on the degree of enlightenment or stupidity of the voting majority.
John Hospers
#11. 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
#12. Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable.
Thomas Jefferson
#13. The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny.
Ayn Rand
#14. "All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny." It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.
Emma Goldman
#15. The majority of the stupid is invincible and guaranteed for all time. The terror of their tyranny, however, is alleviated by their lack of consistency.
Albert Einstein
#16. 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
#17. Democratic forms of government are vulnerable to mass prejudice, the so-called tyranny of the majority.
Maggie Gallagher
#18. The restriction of religion to private life therefore does not necessarily threaten the vital interests of the majority religion, if there is one, and it protects minority religions from tyranny of the majority.
Phillip E. Johnson
#19. 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
#20. The majority of business men are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason.
David Ogilvy
#22. The liberation from ignorance and tyranny was a long war, because the oppressors always had the advantage. They smooth-talked the masses with lies and promises.
Michael R. French
#23. The human condition for the vast majority of people on this planet for the entire time of what humanity has been here has been bondage and tyranny, dictatorship, pestilence. That's really what American exceptionalism is, when you get right down to it.
Rush Limbaugh
#24. The tyranny of majorities may be as bad as the tyranny of kings.
Arthur Balfour
#25. In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature.
James Madison
#26. I do not believe in the unlimited power of the majority,because tyranny of the majority is tyranny like any other.
Alija Izetbegovic
#27. The most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.
Anna Quindlen
#28. It was like setting up a guillotine in the public square.You don't expect a thousand people to line up to put their heads in it.
Dave Eggers
