A Quote by James Madison

The purpose of the Constitution is to restrict the majority's ability to harm a minority.

James Madison

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James Madison
American - President
March 16, 1751 - June 28, 1836

The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision.

David Boies

Our Constitution does not profess to have been established simply by the majority, but by 'the people' - the minority as much as the majority.

Lysander Spooner

Rules of Order state that ... No minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal business of the organisation .... but No majority has a right to prevent a minority from peacefully attempting to become the majority.

Robert M. Pirsig

The purpose of the minority is to become the majority.

Pete Sessions

In the case of my country, Guatemala, 65% of the inhabitants are indigenous. The constitution speaks of protection for the indigenous. Who authorized a minority to protect an immense majority? It is not only political, cultural and economic marginalization, it is an attempt against the dignity of the majority of the population.

Rigoberta Menchu

Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion - and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority.

Soren Kierkegaard

Instead of minority and majority politics, if we try and give the same rights to all, it is not polarisation. This is the core value of our Constitution.

Amit Shah

In East, South and Central Africa, the minority manipulated the majority into believing the minority was the majority, that there were more whites in the world than blacks; instilled in the blacks a sense of inferiority, inadequacy, worthlessness.

Peter Abrahams

The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint, upon the advice and consent of a majority of the Senate, and it plainly does not give a minority of senators any right to interfere with that process.

John Jay Hooker

Its minority rule and majority limited rights. In fact it's set up that way. If you read the framers of the constitution, including James Madison, he was pretty clear about it.

Noam Chomsky

Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority.

William Jennings Bryan

Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.

Soren Kierkegaard

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

Henry David Thoreau

Contrary to popular opinion, the Constitution was not - and is not - a grant of rights to the citizenry. Instead, the Constitution is a "barbed-wire entanglement" designed to interfere with, restrict, and impede government officials in the exercise of political power.

Jacob G. Hornberger

If an action must be taken that will benefit the majority at the cost of the minority, is it morally indefensible? If an action taken for the benefit of a majority occurs at the expense of a minority, is it moral action?

Garth Nix

A Quote by James Madison

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