Larry Niven Quotes

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

Better be wrong with the many than right with the few.

Was there ever a time when the majority was right?

What the multitude says is so, or soon will be.

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

Why should we pay so much attention to what the majority thinks?

All the wisdom of the world consists of shouting with the majority.

The voice of the majority is no proof of justice.

Politics is a herd mentality. Politicians don't really lead. Politicians reflect what they think is consensus opinion.

Where an opinion is general, it is usually correct.

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.

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.

The multitude is always in the wrong.

Nor is the People's Judgment always true: The Most may err as grossly as the Few.

I am persuaded myself that the good sense of the people will always be found to be the best army.

The masses, the public, is too strict.

The opinion of the majority is not lightly to be rejected; but neither is it to be carelessly echoed.

I have been defeated for election often enough to know that the majority can be wrong.

… 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 …

The majority never has right on its side.

Wherever the sentiment of the majority is still genuine and intense, it is found to have abated little of its claim to be obeyed.

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

There can be no assumption that today’s majority is “right”.

The human race is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.