Walter E. Williams Quotes

It is an essential tenet of our whole representative form of government, the idea that there should not be some tyranny which makes it so nobody can even have a chance to vote.

It’s very basic in the Bill of Rights, he says. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, whether the majority agrees with them or not. Rights are in some sense anti-democratic; to trumpet democracy as the all-important value is to denigrate them.”

Voting should be the right of the great body of the society…an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

The parliamentary regime is a regime of parties

The end of all political associations is, the preservation of the rights of man, which rights are liberty, property, and security; that the nation is the source of all sovereignty derived from it...

It appears that there have been differences of opinion and party differences, from the first establishment of government to the present day, and on the same question which now divides our own country; that these will continue through all future time; that every one takes his side in favor of the many, or of the few, according to his constitution

A popular assembly without parties--500 isolated individuals--cannot stand five years against a Minister with an organized Government without becoming a servile Senate.

You cannot choose between party government and Parliamentary government. I say, you can have no Parliamentary government if you have no party government; and, therefore, when Gentlemen denounce party government, they strike at that scheme of government which, in my opinion, has made this country great, and which I hope will keep it great.

The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.

Ours is a fully democratic government, which in our language we call a people's government.

In America, we have a two-party system, and the American Constitution is a piece of brilliance, but they did not know when they set it up we would just have a two-party system. It just so happens that our electorate pushed towards the two-party system because it's a very good way to govern.

Democracy, in any rational form, also imposes conditions on majority rule. That's what the Bill of Rights is about, for example.

A pure democracy is generally a very bad government, It is often the most tyrannical government on earth; for a multitude is often rash, and will not hear reason.

Nobody needs to justify why they "need" a right: the burden of justification falls on the one seeking to infringe upon the right. But even if they did, you can't give away the rights of others because they're not useful to you. More simply, the majority cannot vote away the natural rights of the minority. Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority.

I've always lived in a democratic society.

Say, oh well, the Republicans don't like this therefor I shouldn't do it. What kind of a government would that be. We're not a parliamentary system.

England shouldn't have the real freedom of vote and we shouldn't either. Because as [James Madison] put it, one of the primary goals of government was to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority, to make sure the opulent maintain their rights. The constitutional system was structured to ensure that outcome.

People should not be able to vote to take away the rights of others.

Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority.

I trust that the proposed Constitution afford a genuine specimen of representative government and republican government; and that it will answer, in an eminent degree, all the beneficial purposes of society.

Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection.

America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government.

The Bill of Rights does not come from the people and is not subject to change by majorities. It comes from the nature of things. It declares the inalienable rights of man not only against all government but also against the people collectively.

As the people of the United States enjoy the great merit of having established a system of Government on the basis of human rights, and of giving it a form without example, which, as they believe, unites the greatest national strength with the best security for public order and individual liberty, they owe to themselves, to their posterity and to the world, a preservation of the system in its purity, its symmetry, and its authenticity.