Penn Jillette Quotes

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

This leads to a question - if a great many people are for a certain project, is it necessarily right? If the vast majority is for it, is it even more certainly right? This, to be sure, is one of the tricky points of democracy. The minority often turns out to be right, and though one believes in the efficacy of the democratic process, one has also to recognize that the demand of the many for a particular project at a particular time may mean only disaster.

In our so-called democracy we are accustomed to give the majority what they want rather than educate them to understand what is best for them.

Was there ever a time when the majority was right?

Democracy gives every man the right to be his own oppressor.

Unanimity of opinion is characteristic of savages and civilization only advances as more and more people have the right to call wrong what the majority calls right..

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.

The great thing about democracy is we're free to take in all this information and make up our own minds about what is truth.

Notwithstanding the oppression and injustice experienced among us from democracy, the genius of the people is in favor of it, and the genius of the people must be consulted.

A democratic state must feel before it can see; that is what makes it slow to act. But the people, at last, will be right.

The majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.

It does not prove a thing to be right because the majority say it is so.

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

The minority yields to the majority!

Balancing the common good with the freedom and liberty to exercise that individuality has been and remains a challenge for those committed to democracy while understanding that the polis ensures our participation and therefore our citizenship.

One has the right to be wrong in a democracy.

To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.

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 general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

If everybody is happy, then something is wrong with the democratic process.

If we had a consensus we wouldn't have to go to a referendum.

One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.

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.