William Allen White Quotes

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.

It is amazing how many people seem to think that the government exists to turn their prejudices into law.

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

It is important not to confuse the national spirit with that of the faction which presently dominates…

Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

Democrats may be in the minority in Congress, but we speak for the majority of Americans.

The right of the majority is absolute.

The court makes an amazing amount of decisions that ought to be made by the people.

Democracy is when the people keep a government in check.

Democracy is not about one party dominating.

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.

In a democracy there is a centralization of governmental power in a simple majority.

The Senate of the United States has been both extravagantly praised and unreasonably disparaged, according to the predisposition and temper of its various critics…. The truth is, in this case as in so many others, something quite commonplace and practical. The Senate is just what the mode of its election and the conditions of public life in this country make it.

Minority rights are just as important as majority decisions.

I think if the people of this country can be reached with the truth, their judgment will be in favor of the many, as against the privileged few.

[Describing America:] Public opinion, which is there omnipotent, is generally right in its aims ...

The voice of the people must be heeded.

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

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

Shall we judge a country by the majority, or the minority? By the minority, surely.

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

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.

The needs of the many cannot be met by the party of the few.

It is quite plain that your government will never be able to restrain a distressed and discontented majority. For with you the majority is the government, and has the rich, who are always a minority, absolutely at its mercy.

In the United States, where the numerical majority have long been in full possession of collective despotism, they would probably be as unwilling to part with it as a single despot or an aristocracy.