Canadian Royal Commission on Bilingualism Quotes

It is impossible that the whisper of a faction should prevail against the voice of a nation.

The minority must bow to the majority.

A vocal minority beats a silent majority.

The majority is always sane.

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

[We] must come to understand what it means to be a member of the minority or other small partner people, and to be ready to give that minority assurances which are necessary for a majority..

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

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority.... From the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

The opinion of the strongest is always the best.

If a majority be united by a common interest, the rights of the minority will be insecure.

The parliamentary regime leaves everything to the decision of majorities,--how can the large majorities beyond parliament be expected not to wish to decide? If, from above, they hear the fiddle screeching, what else is to be expected than that those below should dance?

There were differences of opinion, but the only opinion that mattered was the President’s opinion.

If everyone in the party has to agree on everything, that’s going to be a very small party.

No usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

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

The will of the majority will be respected.

If government is in the hands of the few, they will tyrannize the many; if in the hands of the many, they will tyrannize over the few. It ought to be in the hands of both, and they should be separated.... They will need a mutual check. This check is a monarch.

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.

It is no accident that in America today the gap between the very rich and everyone else is wider than at any time since the Gilded Age. Now, as then, the titans are seeking an even greater political voice to match their economic power. Now, as then, the inevitable danger is that they will confuse their own self-interest with the common good.

Legislative bodies have tended more and more to become wholly inefficient for the purposes of legislation. The prime feature in causing this unhealthy growth has been the discovery by minorities that under the old rules of parliamentary procedure they could put a complete stop to all legislative action... If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority.

A government by the passions of the multitude, or, no less correctly, according to the vices and ambitions of their leaders, is a democracy.

A privilege accruing to the majority ceases to be such.

Majorities are no less exposed to error and frustration than kings and dictators. That a fact is deemed true by the majority does not prove its truth.

It cannot be denied with truth, that this new constitution is, in its first principles, most highly and dangerously, oligarchic.

… 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 …