Richard Henry Lee Quotes

All societies, including societies called democratic, are ruled by a minority.

In an autocracy, one person has his way; in an aristocracy a few people have their way; in a democracy no one has his way.

Wherever the real power in a government lies, there is the danger of oppression. In our Government the real power lies in the majority of the community.

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.

In the history of mankind many republics have risen, have flourished for a less or greater time, and then have fallen because their citizens lost the power of governing themselves and thereby of governing their state; and in no way has this loss of power been so often and so clearly shown as in the tendency to turn the government into a government primarily for the benefit of one class instead of a government for the benefit of the people as a whole.

Constitutions are in politics what paper money is in commerce. They afford great facilities and conveniences. But we must not attribute to them that value which really belongs to what they represent. They are not power, but symbols of power, and will, in an emergency, prove altogether useless unless the power for which they stand be forthcoming.

The debate is ended. Fifty percent plus one vote is all we need to govern this country.

There are certain people within the new government who have a slightly disturbing tendency toward authoritarianism, but there are so many checks and balances that in that way their noises are just noises.

I've been reading this little book. It's called the Russian constitution. And it says that the only source of power in Russia is the people. So I don't want to hear those who say we're appealing to the authorities. Who's the power here?

This country has always been run by elite, and it's an elitist democracy. And that's not a radical concept. It's elitist democracy. When people talk about democracy, they don't talk - really talk about participatory democracy, until the point that we get us at Election Day.

You can not possibly have a broader basis for government than that which includes all the people, with all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain their rights.

Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles.

Our new government is now in full Operation, but how it will move or what will be the End of it I can scarcely conjecture. I am not yet in Love with it, & I doubt if I ever shall be

The notion that a person's constitutional rights may be subject to a majority vote is itself anathema.

Government is everywhere to a great extent controlled by powerful minorities, with an interest distinct from that of the mass of the people.

Our nation has in 300 years grown apart from even the democratic ideals of other peoples. In some of them class government still lingers; in others, democracy is little better than oligarchy.

In our Governments, the real power lies in the majority of the Community, and the invasion of private rights is chiefly to be apprehended, not from the acts of Government contrary to the sense of its constituents, but from acts in which the Government is the mere instrument of the major number of the constituents.

Rather than living in a democracy, we are living in a benevolent oligarchy.

Republics can commit no greater error than to adopt or continue any feature in their systems of government which may be calculated to create or increase the lover of power in the bosoms of those to whom necessity obliges them to commit the management of their affairs.

If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize the many; if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and they should be separated.... They will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch.

51 percent of the people should not always get 100% of the power; 51 percent of the people should certainly not get all the power if they use that power to exclude the 49%. In that case, we do not have majority rule. We have majority tyranny.

It is conflict combined with consent, not consent alone, which preserves democracy from eroding into oligarchy.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?

You are apprehensive of monarchy; I of aristocracy. I would therefore have given more power to the President and less to the Senate.

An equality of estate will give an equality of power; and an equality of power is a commonwealth, or democracy…