Jefferson Davis
Politician, Military Leader
"Neither current events nor history show that the majority rule, or ever did rule."
Majority Rule quotes
Majority Rule
34 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Philosopher, Writer, Composer
"It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can."
Thomas Jefferson
Politician, Founding Father
"Though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be rightful, must be reasonable."
Thomas Jefferson
Politician, Founding Father
"the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
Ayn Rand
Philosopher, Novelist
"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."
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"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."
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"But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it."
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""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."
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"Democracy, in any rational form, also imposes conditions on majority rule. That's what the Bill of Rights is about, for example."
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"One of the benefits of a properly functioning democracy is minority rights and majority rule."
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"After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it."
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"America was founded on majority rule, not supermajority rule. Somehow, over the years, this has morphed into supermajority rule, and that changes things."
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