Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan Quotes

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

Majorities without discipline are not majorities.

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

A majority can do anything.

Being a member of the majority is more fulfilling than being a member of the majority.

The people never have and never will be able to understand how the will of a majority of the House of Representatives can be set aside by the judgment of a few men on a powerful committee.

When a respectable minority objects to any rule of conduct, it would be dignified for the majority ... to yield.... Numerical strength savors of violence when it acts in total disregard of any strongly felt opinion of the minority.

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

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.

The minority in the Senate has the power to prevent the majority from acting.

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.

When you're in the minority, it doesn't matter what you're agenda is, you're not going to have the degree of freedom that you have as a member of the majority.

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.

The purpose of the minority is to become the majority.

The reality is that when three or four networks are at the table with three or four political parties, someone is going to be the victim.

The only moral Foundation of Government is the Consent of the People. But to what an Extent Shall We carry this Principle? Shall We Say, that every Individual of the Community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must consent, expressly to every Act of Legislation? No, you will say. This is impossible. How then does the Right arise in the Majority to govern the Minority, against their Will? Whence arises the Right of the Men to govern Women, without their Consent? Whence the Right of the old to bind the Young, without theirs.

Democracy—the essential thing as distinguished from this or that democratic government—was primarily an attitude of mind, a spiritual testament, and not an economic structure or a political machine. The testament involved certain basic beliefs—that the personality was sacrosanct, which was the meaning of liberty; that policy should be settled by free discussion; that normally a minority should be ready to yield to a majority, which in turn should respect a minority’s sacred things.

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

Majority rule is not the norm for solving issues or problems.

Don't call the question unless you've got the votes.

The Supreme Court is the living voice of the Constitution—that is, of the will of the people expressed in the fundamental law they have enacted. It is ... the conscience of the people.... It is the guarantee of the minority who, when threatened by the impatient vehemence of the majority, can appeal to this permanent law, finding the interpreter and enforcer thereof in a Court set high above the assaults of faction.

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

The higher rank of a committee member who proposes an amendment, the greater the chances of that amendment getting accepted regardless of its merit.

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

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