Joseph Cannon Quotes

Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.

The majority of people wherever found ought in all questions to govern the minority.

As for our majority... one is enough.

Democracy is nothing but the Tyranny of Majorities, the most abominable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, not upon the nobility of a race, not on the merits of talents and of riches. It merely rests upon numbers and hides behind the name of the people.

The political party having the majority ... [will] necessarily control all the committees ... because they ... must, as a party, protect themselves against the chance of the control of the business of the body going into the hands of their opponents.

A majority is always the best repartee.

Majorities without discipline are not majorities.

With five votes and you can get anything around here.

In a democracy, you must follow the will of the majority, which may be right or wrong, moral or immoral, just or unjust. If that's the ruling of the majority that is what you should follow, respect, and obey — although you may continue to disagree with it.

The majority prevails in a democracy, eventually.

Majoritarian is when a majority takes a decision. It is not dictatorship. It is about which issue is major.

The minority yields to the majority!

We should not allow the minority to control the majority by requiring super majorities on budget related votes.

You can go to Hell! It makes no difference what a majority of you decide; I am the Committee ...

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

The opinion of the strongest is always the best.

If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.

There is one thing, too apt to be forgotten, which it much behooves us to remember: In the Colonies, as everywhere else in this world, the vital point is not who decides, but what is decided on!

It is when it is contended that in a democracy right is what the majority makes it to be that democracy degenerates into demagoguery.

Wherever the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed.

When people say - 'Well, do you miss being a judge since you're in Congress,' I go - 'Only when I want people to sit down and shut up.'

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

There is no maxim, in my opinion, which is more liable to be misapplied, and which, therefore, more needs elucidation, than the current one, that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.

The majority is still at the General's disposal.

We must reflect more on what democracy in the exercise of authority would mean. Is truth determined by a majority vote, only for a new 'truth' to be 'discovered' by a new majority tomorrow?