John Simon Quotes

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

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 essential objection to democracy is that, with few exceptions, it imposes degrading acts and attitudes upon the men responsible for the welfare and dignity of the state.

The majority prevails in a democracy, eventually.

A government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices and ambitions of their leaders, is a democracy.

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

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

The minority yields to the majority!

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

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?

A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party

'Democratic' in its original meaning refers to unlimited majority rule....a social system in which one's work, one's property, one's mind, and one's life are at the mercy of any gang that may muster the vote of a majority at any moment for any purpose

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.

A majority can do anything.

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

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

There is no maxim ... which is more liable to be misapplied ... than the current one that the interest of the majority is the political standard of right and wrong.

This... [is] a country where the will of the majority is the law, and ought to be the law

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

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.

… though the majority might be temporarily wrong, in the end, a majority that remained a majority over a period of years was usually right, and in our country, at least, we have been governed by the will of the majority. It has not meant, nor I surmise, does it mean in the present, the destruction of minorities …

People mistake majoritarianism for democracy.

The greatest fallacy of democracy is that everyone's opinion is worth the same

The will of the majority will be respected.