Lord Acton Quotes

Government, in which the majority rules in all things, cannot be based on justice.

It is when it is contended that in a democracy right is what the majority makes it to be that democracy degenerates into demagoguery.

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

We are against the majority tyrannizing the minority. But we are definitely against the minority tyrannizing the majority.

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.

Our supreme governors, the mob.

The dictatorship of the majority is a bugaboo which haunts the books of political theorists but has never been found in the flesh in modern history

The worst and most dangerous form of absolutist rule is that of an intolerant majority.

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 one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.

Democracy passes into despotism.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

I don't see democracy getting better. I see democracy diminishing. More rules, more legislation. Eventually governments will see everything.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it.

A general presumption that Icings will govern well, is not a sufficient security to the People... those who subjected themselves to the will of a man were governed by a beast.

A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped.

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

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

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 traitor is a good fruit to hang from the boughs of the tree of liberty.

When the people have no other tyrant, their own public opinion becomes one.

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