Majority rule rests on numbers; democracy rests on the well-grounded assumption that society is neither a collection of units nor an organism but a network of human relations.
. . . but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself.
The young [Nazi] movement is in its nature and inner organization anti-parliamentarian; that is, it rejects. . . a principle of majority rule in which the leader is degraded to the level of mere executant of other people's wills and opinion.
Democracy, or "majority rules," is another trick of our society to force us to do things we don't want to do. Even if we actually lived in a pure democracy (and the system we do live in is not even close), where everyone got a single vote on every subject, forcing the minority to obey the majority is no different to one man, if he had the power, forcing everyone else to do what he wanted them to-simply because he could.
A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees. . . which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
"All government in essence," says Emerson, "is tyranny. " It matters not whether it is government by divine right or majority rule. In every instance its aim is the absolute subordination of the individual.
The rights to life, liberty and property were not meant to be subject to the vagaries of majority rule.
The Greeks. . . labored under the delusion that their democracy was a guarantee of peace and plenty, not realizing that unrestrained majority rule always destroys freedom, puts the minority at the mercy of the mob, and works at cross-purposes to the effective use of human energy and individual initiative.
It's precisely because America is not a democracy that we have survived! It's precisely because majority rule does have checks and balances on it. It's precisely because this is a representative republic that we have survived.
Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote.
I call government that works the best for people open society, which is basically just another more general term for a democracy that is - you call it maybe a liberal democracy. It's not only majority rule but also respect for minorities and minority opinions and the rule of law. So it's really a sort of institutional democracy.
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority.
Democracy, in any rational form, also imposes conditions on majority rule. That's what the Bill of Rights is about, for example.
The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.
Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.
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.
Good, law-abiding, value-oriented citizens are the ultimate in hypocrisy; "majority rules" and the law are exactly the same as being the biggest bully on the block with the biggest stick-it is only might that allows one group to force another to live by its code of conduct.
A lynch mob is [unlimited] Majority Rule stripped of its fancy trappings and its facade of respectability.
