Majority Quotes - Page 29

• We must abandon the notion that the people govern. Instead, we must adopt the theory that, by their occasional mobilisations as a majority, people support or oppose the individuals who actually govern.

  Walter Lippmann

  Freedom, People, Support

  Walter Lippmann, Clinton Rossiter, James Lare (1982). “The Essential Lippmann: A Political Philosophy for Liberal Democracy”, p.107, Harvard University Press

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• The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

  Heraclitus

  Knowledge, People, Understanding

  Heraclitus of Ephesus (2017). “Heraclitus on the two antithetical forces in life: Interdependent and mutually convertible aspects of One Cause”, p.6, Philaletheians UK

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• ...majority Patriotism is the customary Patriotism.

  Mark Twain

  Patriotism

  Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.351, Courier Corporation

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  If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority.

  Barbara Jordan

  Peace, Ubuntu, Society Today

  Barbara Jordan, Max R. Sherman (2007). “Barbara Jordan: Speaking the Truth With Eloquent Thunder”

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• Philosophy is antipoetic. Philosophize about mankind and you brush aside individual uniqueness, which a poet cannot do without self-damage. Unless, for a start, he has a strong personal rhythm to vary his metrics, he is nothing. Poets mistrust philosophy. They know that once the heads are counted, each owner of a head loses his personal identify and becomes a number in some government scheme: if not as a slave or serf, at least as a party to the device of majority voting, which smothers personal views.

  Robert Graves

  Strong, Philosophy, Party

  Robert Graves, Patrick J. Quinn (2000). “Some speculations on literature, history, and religion”, Carcanet Press Ltd.

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• The justification of majority rule in politics is not to be found in its ethical superiority.

  Walter Lippmann

  Majority Rule, Politics, Ethical

  Walter Lippmann (2011). “The Phantom Public”, p.48, Transaction Publishers

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• You must believe that you can help bring about a better world. A good society is produced only by good individuals, just as truly as a majority in a presidential election is produced by the votes of single electors.

  Bertrand Russell

  Believe, Presidential, Society

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.642, Psychology Press

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• The whole thing [religion] is so patently infantile, so foreign to reality, that to anyone with a friendly attitude to humanity it is painful to think that the great majority of mortals will never be able to rise above this view of life.

  Sigmund Freud

  Atheist, Attitude, Reality

  Sigmund Freud, James Strachey, Anna Freud, Carrie Lee Rothgeb (1961). “The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud”

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• Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions....there was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

  Mark Twain

  Country, Heart, People

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• Step through new doors. The majority of the time there's something fantastic on the other side.

  Oprah Winfrey

  Inspirational, Change, Travel

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• Courage means going against majority opinion in the name of the truth.

  Vaclav Havel

  Courage, Mean, Names

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• Each space has a role to play, but while to date the majority of media investment and energy has really focused on the bought on the bought space ... this balance is shifting to a much stronger emphasis on owned and generated spaces.

  Jamie Leach

  Business, Space, Media

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• Until relatively recently, mass political movements were still about basic rights of food, shelter, education and self sufficiency. The reasons fewer people vote these days, or turn up for political meetings, is that for the vast majority of us those rights have been fulfilled. These days it's in the adverts for mobile phones or foreign holidays where phrases like "Join the Revolution!" and "Cry Freedom!" are bandied about for a generation which knows nothing of their provenance. Just as now we have luxury illnesses to replace real ones, so now we have luxury politics.

  John Diamond

  Real, Holiday, Rights

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• We must not only control the weapons that can kill us, we must bridge the great disparities of wealth and opportunity among the peoples of the world, the vast majority of whom live in poverty without hope, opportunity or choices in life. These conditions are a breeding ground for division that can cause a desperate people to resort to nuclear weapons as a last resort. Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place.

  Muhammad Ali

  Lying, Commitment, Opportunity

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• The nature of the economic system should be a matter for public choice, and free market capitalism should not be accepted without any discussion of the rich variety of alternatives ... Unlike civil laws, economic laws are imposed on people with all the authority of immutable laws of nature. But the economy is created by people, supported by government intervention, regulation, statute and subsidy, and implemented in such a way that it gives substantial wealth and power to a privileged few, while the majority face a life of relentless work, stress and periodic financial insecurity.

  Tony Benn

  Stress, Acceptance, Government Intervention

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• It is a pity that...the majority of feminists and their allies have stuck to the dead ground of "Me Decade" possessive individualism, an ideology that has more in common than it admits with the prehistoric right, which it claims to oppose but has in fact encouraged.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Abortion, Feminist, Allies

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• If I were to search for the central core of difficulty in people as I have come to know them, it is that in the great majority of cases they despise themselves, regarding themselves as worthless and unlovable.

  Carl Rogers

  Self Esteem, People, Despise

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• The idea that the majority of students attend a university for an education independent of the degree and grades is a hypocrisy everyone is happier not to expose. Occasionally some students do arrive for an education but rote and mechanical nature of the institution soon converts them to a less idealic attitude

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Attitude, Independent, Ideas

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• Species do not grow more perfect: the weaker dominate the strong, again and again- the reason being that they are the great majority, and they are also cleverer. Darwin forgot the mind (-that is English!): the weak possess more mind. ... To acquire mind, one must need mind-one loses it when one no longer needs it.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Strong, Science, Perfect

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• Democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasure. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefit from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy, always to be followed by a dictatorship, and then a monarchy.

  Alexander Fraser Tytler

  Democracies Have, Government, Democracy

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• The majority of pop stars are complete idiots in every respect.

  Marquis de Sade

  Stars, Idiot, Fame

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• This is the age in which thin and theoretic minorities can cover and conquer unconscious and untheoretic majorities.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Progress, Age, Minorities

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• The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Christmas, People, Wake Up

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• The vast majority of the world knows there's no reason to circumcise. Someone should tell the doctors.

  Penn Jillette

  Atheist, Doctors, World

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• Most men in a concentration camp believed that the real opportunities of life had passed. Yet, in reality, there was an opportunity and a challenge. One could make a victory of those experiences, turning life into an inner triumph, or one could ignore the challenge and simply vegetate, as did a majority of the prisoners.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Life, Attitude, Real

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.78, Beacon Press

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