Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).
Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.
In Britain, polls show large majorities in favour of mansion taxes and higher taxes on the finance sector.
The tyranny of majorities may be as bad as the tyranny of kings.
I mean, we've had Republican majorities in the House and even the Senate for a couple of years. How has that worked out, stopping [Barack] Obama, hmm? Seriously.
The minorities are sometimes right. The majorities never.
Free institutions are not the property of any majority. They do not confer upon majorities unlimited powers. The rights of the majority are limited rights. They are limited not only by the constitutional guarantees but by the moral principle implied in those guarantees. That principle is that men may not use the facilities of liberty to impair them. No man may invoke a right in order to destroy it.
Acting alone, minorities can never achieve the majorities necessary for political change.
You know, a lot of the people that are running. We want to go in; we want to have majorities. It's very important.
Only majorities can expand political rights in America's constitutional society.
I think, from a progressive point of view, to have a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House, and to have spent the time on Obamacare, which had real benefits, 20 million insured, but not on inequality, was a major cost to the Democratic Party, costing them their majorities, but also a bit of a cost to the country, because it didn't address the fundamental issues that led to Donald Trump and that led to a lot of unhappiness, just the continued widening inequality.
They're still a subject beholden to special interests, but at least they have a national constituency. At least they have to think about national majorities.
One great object of the Constitution was to restrain majorities from oppressing minorities or encroaching upon their just rights.
Democracy is for infidels. A real Muslim is not a democrat because he doesn't care about the opinions of majorities and minorities don't interest him. He is only interested in what Islam says.
Majorities are generally wrong, if only in their reasons for being right.
Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.
In a democracy, thumping majorities prevail.
