Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

One of the benefits of a properly functioning democracy is minority rights and majority rule.

If you give up on democracy, you might as well give up on everything.

Democracy is based on the majority principle. This is especially true in a country such as ours where the vast majority have been systematically denied their rights. At the same time, democracy also requires that the rights of political and other minorities be safeguarded.

I am a firm believer in the importance of democracy, not only as the ultimate goal, but also as an essential part of the process.

I cannot too often repeat that Democracy is a word the real gist of which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which its syllables have come, from pen or tongue. It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has yet to be enacted.

Logically, in a society ostensibly grounded on representative government, it would seem reasonable that a majority of the people in a State would elect a majority of that State’s legislators.

Real equality is the soul of the state in a democracy

A man may be voted a bore or shunned as a pest, and yet he must be accorded the rights to which he is entitled by virtue of being a representative of the people.

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

The people never have and never will be able to understand how the will of a majority of the House of Representatives can be set aside by the judgment of a few men on a powerful committee.

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.

Democratic rights develop when the ruled demand them and have the means to prevail.

There's always a little bit of friction when you're trying to democratize an industry.

I think democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world, because if you have power you use it to meet the needs of you and your community.

Democracy requires that if you who don't like the outcome of elections you have to tolerate it and then pursue your interest the next time around.

Democracy is a gleaming Excalibur - let's not use it just to mend the toaster.

Democracy is the absolute value that makes for human dignity, as well as the only road to sustained economic development and social justice.

A silent majority and government by the people is incompatible.

Democracy, if it is reasonable, limits itself to giving everyone an equal opportunity to compete and to obtain.

Democracy is morose, and runs to anarchy, but in the state, and in the schools, it is indispensable to resist the consolidation ofall men into a few men.

It is democracy I am really suffering from as much as I am suffering from the opposition.

He who would save liberty must put his trust in democracy.

Freedom is always in danger, and the majority of mankind will always acquiesce in its loss, unless a minority is willing to challenge the privileges of its few and the apathy of the masses.

Democracy is the right choice and is the greatest form of government ever created.

Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)