Thomas Jefferson Quotes

The right of the majority is absolute.

Supreme power rests in the will of all or of the majority.

We are sensible of the duty and expediency of submitting our opinions to the will of the majority, and can wait with patience till they get right if they happen to be at any time wrong.

The majority voice should be controlling ... after a full, fair, and candid expression.

We are a democracy and I will go with the 51 percent wherever that leads us.

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

What you need to do is protect the structures and dynamics that are helping the people choose. The only thing that we can do is to respect the will of the people when it comes to majority processes. It is not for us to impose a model, it is not for us to impose answers to some critical questions.

The American people are too well schooled in the duty and practice of submitting to the will of the majority to permit any serious uneasiness on that account

Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.

As long as we're in a democracy, I have to give what I think the majority of people will enjoy.

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

Logically, in a society ostensibly grounded on representative government, it would seem reasonable that a majority of the people in a State would elect a majority of that State’s legislators.

A democrat need not believe that the majority will always reach a wise decision. He should however believe in the necessity of accepting the decision of the majority, be it wise or unwise, until such a time that the majority reaches another decision.

Reason will conclude that where multitude is, there is the truth.

We shall determine all matters of state by public discussion, after assemblies have been convoked far and wide.

Government is the majority’s!

This... [is] a country where the will of the majority is the law, and ought to be the law

Control by the majority. Everything else about our government is appendage, it is ornamentation.

The majority prevails in a democracy, eventually.

… 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 …

If we believe in a democratic system, we have to accept the will of the people.

The collective judgment of the electorate must be respected.

The will of the majority will be respected.

The ultimate arbiter is the people of the Union.

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.