A Quote by Lysander Spooner

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

Lysander Spooner

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Account Cannot Deciding Justice Minorities Questions Rightfully Taken

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

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

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

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

Justice is the object of government, and those who support the government, must be agreed as to the justice to be executed by it, or they cannot rightfully unite in maintaining the government itself.

Lysander Spooner

The fine art of executive decision consists in not deciding questions that are not now pertinent, in not deciding prematurely, in not making decision that cannot be made effective, and in not making decisions that others should make.

Chester Barnard

I carried out my orders until arrested. I had no sense that I was spying, and I ask that this be taken into account in deciding my verdict.

Witold Pilecki

Majorities, of course, start with minorities.

Robert Moses

The minorities are sometimes right. The majorities never.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Hillary Clinton

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

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

James K. Polk

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

Chief Justice Roberts has expressly said that the Constitution and the government should be colorblind, he sees no difference between government action that discriminates against minorities and one that benefits minorities.

Erwin Chemerinsky

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

A Quote by Lysander Spooner

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