Shannon K. O'Neil Quotes

Democracy is the fig leaf of elitism.

Five of its nine silk gowns are worn by Slaveholders. More than half its long Bench is filled with Slaveholders. Its Chief Justice is a Slaveholder. The Free States with double the population of the Slave State, do not have half the Judges. The majority represent a minority of 350,000. The minority represent a majority of twenty Millions!

How a minority, reaching majority, seizing authority, hates a minority.

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.

This is the core claim of populism. Only some of the people are really the people.

If populism means reducing the gap between the people and the elite, giving sovereignty - the fullness of sovereignty - back to the people, and making the job of representation really adhere to the protection of the interests represented, we embrace the title of populists.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

Government exists to protect the interests of the powerful from the will of the people.

Yes, I am going to join the Majority and you know I have always preferred Minorities.

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.

The knowing minority had to impose its will on the majority, even by brute force. The great mass, the workers, are in economic slavery. They cannot accomplish their own liberation. Their minds are formed by their masters; they are incapable of understanding their true interests. It is left to the knowing minority to free the mass from the tutelage of its present masters. Only after this is done will the mass understand.

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

Shall we judge a country by the majority, or the minority? By the minority, surely.

All power is fast getting into the hands of the very lowest people.

Power is always gradually stealing away from the many to the few, because the few are more vigilant and consistent.

Our party is divided into those who sit and those who are sat upon.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for suppressing another.

The supreme issue, involving all others, is the encroachment of the powerful few on the rights of the many. It is against the system built up by privilege that we must make unceasing warfare.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

The working class is very under-represented in politics, literature, and everywhere else.

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

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.

For the first time in the life of the great republic, there was a political organization which grappled directly and fundamentally with the growing injustice which marked the dealings between Exploiters and the Exploited

…in every city are found two diverse humors, and this arises from the fact that the common people desire neither to be commanded nor oppressed by the great, and the powerful men desire to command and oppress the people..

Liberty is so much latitude as the powerful choose to accord to the weak.