A Quote by John Adams

The people, when they have been unchecked, have been as unjust, tyrannical, brutal, barbarous, and cruel, as any king or senate possessed of uncontrollable power. The majority has eternally, and without one exception, usurped over the rights of the minority.

John Adams

Quote Topics

Any Been Brutal Cruel Eternally Exception King Majority Minority Over People Possessed Power Rights Senate Tyrannical Uncontrollable Unjust Without

Quote Author

John Adams
American - President
October 30, 1735 - July 4, 1826

Without the values at the core of Christianity and other world religions, without moral norms that have been shaped over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity. One must respect every minority’s right to be different, but the rights of the majority must not be put into question.

Vladimir Putin

In the South, prior to the Civil Rights movement and the 1964 Civil Rights Act, democracy was the rule. The majority of people were white, and the white majority had little or no respect for any rights which the black minority had relative to property, or even to their own lives. The majority - the mob and occasionally the lynch mob - ruled.

Neal Boortz

There has never been a successful social movement for any minority without the support of the majority.

Hudson Taylor

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

That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust.

Robert Byrd

I've been a speaker. I've been a majority leader. I've been a minority leader. Those are the sort of things I don't need any more.

Dan Webster

Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.

Maximilien Robespierre

[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

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

Historically, the judicial branch has often been the sole protector of the rights of minority groups against the will of the popular majority.

Diane Watson

There are no term limits on His reign. He has always been King and He always will be King. There is no death that threatens the perpetuity of His sovereign authority. There is no usurping of power by a lesser rival to His throne. There are no coups, no revolutions (at least, none that succeed). There is no threat of impeachment. He is a King who rules eternally.

Sam Storms

As the House is designed to provide a reflection of the mood of the moment, the Senate is meant to reflect the continuity of the past--to preserve the delicate balance of justice between the majority's whims and the minority's rights.

Lyndon B. Johnson

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Ayn Rand

We have our difficulties, true; but we are a wiser and a tougher nation than we were in 1932. Never have there been six years of such far flung internal preparedness in all of history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill of Rights.