Jean-Jacques Rousseau Quotes

In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

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

Nothing appears more surprising ... than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.

The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.

Why, so soon as French Canadians, who are in a minority in this House and in the country, were to organise as a political party, they would compel the majority to organise as a political party, and the result must be disastrous to themselves.

Wherever you have votes, you have power.

Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule.

A democracy is a state which recognizes the subjection of the minority to the majority, that is, an organization for the systematic use of violence by one class against the other, by one part of the population against another.

Heresy is what the minority believe; it is the name given by the powerful to the doctrines of the weak.

The majority of people wherever found ought in all questions to govern the minority.

The subjection of individuals will increase amongst democratic nations, not only in the same proportion as their equality, but in the same proportion as their ignorance.

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.

No usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

The Islamic order can only be established in countries where Muslims represent the majority of the population. If this is not the case, the Islamic order is reduced to mere power (as the other element -- an Islamic society -- is missing) and may turn to violence

When everyone owns something, in reality nobody owns it. Control then occurs merely by the whims of the politicians in power.

Mob rule can not be allowed to override the decisions of our courts.

We [Congress] are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important. […] That’s not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise.

Today's policies and political activity treat people like pawns. More than ever before, attempts will be made to use people like cogs in a wheel. People will be handled like puppets on a string, and everyone will think that this reflects the greatest progress imaginable.

Democracy in some ways is a very illogical political system. When you win an election, you have to preserve the institutions that would make it possible for your political enemies to win next time. If you think about it, that's almost antithetical to human nature.

Many and subtle are the ideological weapons that the State has wielded through the centuries. Once excellent weapon has been tradition. The longer that the rule of a State has been able to preserve itself, the more powerful this weapon; for then, the X Dynasty or the Y State has the seeming weight of centuries of tradition behind it.

Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important. That's not how we were meant to govern.

Sometimes you hear that many politicians vote for a bill in various forms before they vote against it, or vice versa. The conflict, negotiation, and eventual compromise involved in this process form the essence of the democratic process.

In a democratic party, where internal democracy is alive, there are bound to be different views.

The voice of authority speaks not for the one but for the many; authority figures have a strong and rapid effect on social norms in part because they change our assumptions about what other people think.