Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Government, in which the majority rules in all things, cannot be based on justice.

51 percent of the people should not always get 100% of the power; 51 percent of the people should certainly not get all the power if they use that power to exclude the 49%. In that case, we do not have majority rule. We have majority tyranny.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

If it be said that the consent of the strongest party in a nation, is all that is necessary to justify the establishment of a government that shall have authority over the weaker party, it may be answered that the most despotic governments in the world rest upon that very principle, viz.: the consent of the strongest party.

If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize the many; if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and they should be separated.... They will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch.

A government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

It is an essential tenet of our whole representative form of government, the idea that there should not be some tyranny which makes it so nobody can even have a chance to vote.

With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it; I say, with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that's what really happens.

Democracy is when the people keep a government in check.

It is not good to have a rule of many.

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

As long as there are only 3 to 4 people on the floor, the country is in good hands. It's only when you have 50 to 60 in the Senate that you want to be concerned.

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Shia leaders prefer to keep Iraq united, as long as they maintain their dominance over it, especially now that they have been portrayed as the majority who suffered injustice and oppression over the years. Hence, the atmospheres have been prepared and charged by the American agents to hand the reins of power to the “Shias” or to hold the lion’s share.

If a democracy is to remain real and stable, the majority must be humane and farsighted enough to take care of minorities who have serious objections to the majorities point of view and who, because of lack of numbers, do not have the political strength to impose their own policy solutions through their own political power.

She had got to the bottom of this business of democratic government and found out that it was nothing more than government of any other kind.

All societies, including societies called democratic, are ruled by a minority.

The majority are not morally free to become a tyranny and destroy the rights of minorities.

Wherever you have votes, you have power.

Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule.

Government is everywhere to a great extent controlled by powerful minorities, with an interest distinct from that of the mass of the people.

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy no one has his way.

Bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.