John Buchan Quotes

A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.

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

A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.

[Sometimes] the minorities are too respectable, not to be entitled to some sacrifice of opinion, in the majority.

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

That's the beauty of democracy — you believe what you believe, I believe what I believe, and as long as we're not hurting each other, that's fine. Placing a value judgment on a person's beliefs has no place in a democracy.

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression. The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio, fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.

The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that—however bloody—can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.

If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.

Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords.

The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual.

One has the right to be wrong in a democracy.

A full and fair discussion is essential to democracy.

A free society is a place where it's safe to be unpopular.

Democracy is necessarily despotism, as it establishes an executive power contrary to the general will; all being able to decide against one whose opinion may differ, the will of all is therefore not that of all: which is contradictory and opposite to liberty.

It’s very basic in the Bill of Rights, he says. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, whether the majority agrees with them or not. Rights are in some sense anti-democratic; to trumpet democracy as the all-important value is to denigrate them.”

'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

Discussion is the bedrock of American democracy.

At times those who won, 51 percent of the population claim the right to ride roughshod over the other 49 percent.

Democracy is the form of government in which the free are rulers.

A State is not morally free to allow anarchy and license ... even if the majority should so desire.

By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes to be his duty against the influences of authority and majorities, custom and opinion.

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

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep. Under democracy individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded ...

Democracy affords debate, discussion and dissent.