Thomas Jefferson 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.

So long as a minority conforms to the majority, it is not even a minority.

We submit to the majority because we have to. But we are not compelled to call our attitude of subjection a posture of respect.

A minority may be right. The majority is always wrong.

… 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 …

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..

Abide by the voice of the majority, which we are told by our Master to be the voice of truth, never to be challenged, and always to be whole-heartedly enforced.

The majority is always sane.

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.

Minority rights are just as important as majority decisions.

Majorities … are often mistaken. That is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

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

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

As a class, merchants will always be opposed to the control of majorities.

We must never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

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

The difference between being out of step with a dictator and being out of step with the democratic majority is practically negligible. The important thing is to be in step.

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

Ours is a constitutional freedom where the popular will is the law supreme and minorities are sacredly protected.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

The Government of the absolute majority instead of the Government of the people is but the Government of the strongest interests; and when not efficiently checked, it is the most tyrannical and oppressive that can be devised

The majority never has right on its side.

The tendency of democracies is, in all things, to mediocrity, since the tastes, knowledge, and principles of the majority form the tribunal of appeal.

We must settle this question now -- whether in a free government the minority have the right to break it up whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.