The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.
Government, in which the majority rules in all things, cannot be based on justice.
The majority is not society, is not everyone. Majority coercion over the minority is still coercion.
At times those who won, 51 percent of the population claim the right to ride roughshod over the other 49 percent.
How, then, can the rights of three men exceed the rights of two men? In what possible way can the rights of three men absorb the rights of two men, and make them as if they had never existed.
In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
The majority never has right on its side.
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.
It is a besetting vice of democracies to substitute public opinion for law. This is the usual form in which masses of men exhibit their tyranny.
To say that majorities, as such, have a right to rule minorities, is equivalent to saying that minorities have, and ought to have, no rights, except such as majorities please to allow them.
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.
