A Quote by Lysander Spooner

To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.

Lysander Spooner

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Allow Equivalent Except Minorities Ought Please Right Rights Rule Say Saying Them

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Lysander Spooner
American - Philosopher
January 19, 1808 - May 14, 1887

Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.

Howard Zinn

The minorities are sometimes right. The majorities never.

George Bernard Shaw

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.

James K. Polk

We are not in a situation where the minorities are demanding something and the majorities are pushing back saying 'We don't want it.'

Lee Hsien Loong

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

Majorities, of course, start with minorities.

Robert Moses

By nature, every individual has the right to govern himself; and governments, whether founded on majorities or minorities, must derive their right from the assent, expressed or implied, of the governed,, and be subject to such limitations as they may impose.

John C. Calhoun

Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice.

Lysander Spooner

Acting alone, minorities can never achieve the majorities necessary for political change.

Hillary Clinton

Majorities, as such, afford no guarantees for justice. They are men of the same nature as minorities. They have the same passions for fame, power, and money, as minorities; and are liable and likely to be equally - perhaps more than equally, because more boldly - rapacious, tyrannical and unprincipled, if intrusted with power.

Lysander Spooner

This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

History has never been dominated by majorities, but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith.

R.J. Rushdoony

Democracy is for infidels. A real Muslim is not a democrat because he doesn't care about the opinions of majorities and minorities don't interest him. He is only interested in what Islam says.

Abdul Sattar Abu Risha

Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

Alan Barth

It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong, but no matter, the crowd follows it.

Mark Twain

It is a logical absurdity to equate democracy with freedom in the way that mainstream political philosophers and commentators typically do. A system where individuals and minorities are at the mercy of unconstrained majorities hardly constitutes freedom in any meaningful sense.

Keith Preston

A Quote by Lysander Spooner

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