Leo Tolstoy
Novelist, Philosopher
"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it."
Majority quotes
Majority
910 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Poet, Playwright, Novelist
"Nothing is more disgusting than the majority: because it consists of a few powerful predecessors, of rogues who adapt themselves, of weak who assimilate themselves, and the masses who imitate without knowing at all what they want."
Barbara Jordan
Politician, Lawyer
"If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority."
Sigmund Freud
Neurologist, Psychoanalyst
"I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority."
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosopher, Writer
"Mediocrity is the most effective mask a superior spirit can wear, because to the great majority, which is to say, to the mediocre,it will not suggest a disguise:--and yet it is precisely for their sake that he puts it on--so as not to arouse them, and, indeed, not infrequently to avoid this out of pity and benevolence."
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Majority quotes (page 1 of 46)
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"Historically, the judicial branch has often been the sole protector of the rights of minority groups against the will of the popular majority."
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"In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves."
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"I'm extremely confident that solar will be at least a plurality of power, and most likely a majority... in less than 20 years."
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"The majority of those who are loosely identified by the term 'liberals' are afraid to let themselves discover that what they advocate is statism. They want to keep all the advantages and effects of capitalism, while destroying the cause, and they want to establish statism without its necessary effects. They do not want to know or to admit that they are the champions of dictatorship and slavery."
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"Mankind will in time discover that unbridled majorities are as tyrannical and cruel as unlimited despots."
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"There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action."
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"In a republic this rule ought to be observed: that the majority should not have the predominant power."
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"Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against "society," that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship."
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"Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority."
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"Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles."
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"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority."
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"The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country - I know, because I am one of them."
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"I had to come from something, come from a place that was negative and positive but the majority of it is a negative place."
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"I certainly think that 10 to 20 years from now, clearly the majority of veterinarians will be women."
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"The majority of unskilled investors stubbornly hold onto their losses when the losses are small and reasonable. They could get out cheaply, but being emotionally involved and human, they keep waiting and hoping until their loss gets much bigger and costs them dearly."
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"The majority of mankind is lazyminded, incurious, absorbed in vanities, and tepid in emotion, and is therefore incapable of either much doubt or much faith."
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"There is a limit to the success of conservative populism and the exploitation of "little guy" or "silent majority" rhetoric, and it is very often reached because of the emaciated, corrupted personalities of the demagogues themselves."
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"You know that a majority of the medical costs that are bankrupting families, companies, and nations could be eliminated with better nutrition."
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"It is manifestly contrary to the law of nature, however defined, that a handful of people should gorge themselves with superfluities while the hungry majority goes in need of necessities."
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"Margaret Thatcher has shown that there is power and dignity to be won by defying the status quo and the majority rather than by adapting to them. If the British left, which she froze into immobility like Medusa, could bring itself to learn from this, then we might not have to look upon her like again."
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