John Locke Quotes

Majority rule only works if you're also considering individual rights. Because you can't have five wolves and one sheep voting on what to have for supper.

While a law is in force it should be lived up to. You have a right to try to change it, and if you can persuade the majority that it should be changed then it will be changed. But you must abide by a law until it is changed or you will be flouting the fundamental things that make us a democracy and a law-abiding nation.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best stage, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.

IT may be proper to observe further, that this Duty is not confined to those who live under any one particular Form of Government: It extends to the Subjects of all regular States, lawfully established.

Government loses its claim to legitimacy when it fails to fulfill its obligations.

I believe the relationship you have with your government is not so different to a love relationship.

The only reason of the institution of civil government; and the only rational ground of submission to it, is the common safety and utility.

A contract for the establishment of government, being nothing but a voluntary contract between individuals for their mutual benefit, differs, in nothing that is essential to its validity, from any other contract between man and man, or between nation and nation.

The only moral Foundation of Government is the Consent of the People. But to what an Extent Shall We carry this Principle? Shall We Say, that every Individual of the Community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must consent, expressly to every Act of Legislation? No, you will say. This is impossible. How then does the Right arise in the Majority to govern the Minority, against their Will? Whence arises the Right of the Men to govern Women, without their Consent? Whence the Right of the old to bind the Young, without theirs.

Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.

As sons obey their father and wives obey their husbands, so should citizens obey their rulers.

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

The preservation of the laws was the sole reason which induced men to allow of, and to elect a superior; that is the true origin of sovereign power.

We must consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of its majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country.

The law, the will of the majority expressed in orderly, constitutional methods, is the only king to which we bow.

A body politic is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good.

To a reluctant admission of the necessity for State action, we join a burning belief in duty.

Men are born free, that since they begin with no government, they must therefore institute government by voluntary agreement, and thus government must be their agent, not their superior.

Supreme power rests in the will of all or of the majority.

No one can be a good citizen unless he fulfills those domestic duties which are incumbent on his social station and unless he honors all his obligations to society.

We cannot say no to what has already been approved by the citizens.

Where the law of the majority ceases to be acknowledged, there government ends; the law of the strongest takes its place, and life and property are his who can take them.

Our constitutions purport to be established by 'the people,' and, in theory, 'all the people' consent to such government as the constitutions authorize. But this consent of 'the people' exists only in theory. It has no existence in fact. Government is in reality established by the few; and these few assume the consent of all the rest, without any such consent being actually given.

Government is instituted for those who live under it.

When the citizens at large administer the state for the common interest, the government is called by the generic name - a constitution.