Majority Quotes - Page 4

• Tonight - to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans - I ask for your support.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Support, Tonight, Silent

  Address to the Nation on VietnamWar, 3 Nov. 1969. The term silent majority is found as early as 1870, when the Economist (19 Nov.) referred to "the silent majority which so seldom appears at the polls." See Petronius 2; Edward Young 1

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• What the oil producer gets paid is about 16 percent. The majority of it is tax, which in fairness to the government of this country they have accepted and admitted.

  Olusegun Obasanjo

  Country, Government, Oil

  "Fuel protests switch to Scandinavia". www.cnn.com. September 18, 2000.

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• Does advertising corrupt editors? Yes it does, but fewer editors than you may suppose... the vast majority of editors are incorruptible.

  David Ogilvy

  Editors, Doe, May

  David Ogilvy (1963). “Confessions of an advertising man”, Holiday House

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• Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.

  Blaise Pascal

  Mediocrity, Way, Approved

  "Thoughts of Blaise Pascal".

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• It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Majority Rule, Political, Minorities

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• In his first 100 days, Mr. Obama has put the fate of his presidency in the hands of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He may come to regret that decision.

  Karl Rove

  Regret, Fate, Hands

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• It does not prove a thing to be right because the majority say it is so.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Doe, Literature, Prove

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• I don't very often think I've done a good job. I don't like the majority of what I do. I shouldn't say I don't like it, but I'm not satisfied with almost everything that I do.

  Paul Simon

  Jobs, Thinking, Done

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• I never felt comfortable with myself, because I was never part of the majority. I always felt awkward and shy and on the outside of the momentum of my friends' lives.

  Steven Spielberg

  Awkward, Shy, Momentum

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• When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Thinking, Mind, Vision

  Bill Hybels, Life work journal, Charles R. Swindoll, Larry Burkett (2000). “The Life@work Book”, W Publishing Group

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• What is black empowerment when it seems to benefit not the vast majority but an elite that tends to be recycled?

  Desmond Tutu

  Empowerment, Black, Benefits

  "Tutu says Mbeki enriching few at expense of poor" by Andrew Meldrum, www.theguardian.com. November 23, 2004.

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• Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one already.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Neighbor, Civil Disobedience

  Civil Disobedience (1849) See Coolidge 2; Douglass 7; Andrew Jackson 7; John Knox 1; Wendell Phillips 3

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• The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That's one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population -- the intelligent ones or the fools?

  Henrik Ibsen

  Freedom, Lying, Intelligent

  Henrik Ibsen, James McFarlane (1999). “An Enemy of the People ; The Wild Duck ; Rosmersholm”, p.76, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of society.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Freedom, 4th Of July, Law

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.591

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• Don't ever let economic alone determine your career or how you spend the majority of your time.

  Denis Waitley

  Time, Money, Careers

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• I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

  Charles Dudley Warner

  Selfish, Opportunity, People

  Charles Dudley Warner (2006). “My Summer in a Garden: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.83, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• It is commercial pop that the majority of people understand. A working man's daughter would not understand blues.

  Barry Gibb

  Daughter, Mother, Men

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• If any of us hopes to survive, she must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.

  June Jordan

  Women, Political, Female

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• While the vast majority of hackers may be disinclined towards violence, it would only take a few to turn cyber terrorism into reality.

  Dorothy E. Denning

  Reality, May, Violence

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• But government in which the majority rule in all cases can not be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Majority Rule, Justice

  Henry David Thoreau, Nancy L. Rosenblum (1996). “Thoreau: Political Writings”, p.2, Cambridge University Press

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• Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.

  James Madison

  Party, Rights, Justice

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (1842). “The Federalist, on the New Constitution, Written in the Year 1788”, p.42

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• A pure Democracy, by which I mean a Society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the Government in person, can admit of no cure for the mischiefs of faction. A common passion or interest will, in almost every case, be felt by a majority of the whole; a communication and concert result from the form of Government itself; and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party, or an obnoxious individual. Hence it is, that such Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives, as they have been violent in their deaths.

  James Madison

  Party, Passion, Sacrifice

  "Federalist No. 10 (The Federalist Papers)". Essay by James Madison, November 23, 1787.

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• God so loved the world that he made up his mind to damn a large majority of the human race.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Race, Religion, Mind

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.905, Library of Alexandria

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• What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Time, Truth, Morality

  Dialogues (1954) (entry for 30 Aug. 1941)

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• A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Power, Minorities, Weight

  Henry David Thoreau (1942). “Civil Disobedience”, p.11, Hayes Barton Press

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