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    Except in the sacred texts of democracy and in the incantations of orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force. What other virtue can there be in fifty-one percent except the brute fact that fifty-one is more than forty-nine? The rule of fifty-one per cent is a convenience, it is for certain matters a satisfactory political device, it is for others the lesser of two evils, and for others it is acceptable because we do not know any less troublesome method of obtaining a political decision. But it may easily become an absurd tyranny if we regard it worshipfully, as though it were more than a political device. We have lost all sense of its true meaning when we imagine that the opinion of fifty-one per cent is in some high fashion the true opinion of the whole hundred per cent, or indulge in the sophistry that the rule of a majority is based upon the ultimate equality of man.

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  13  /  15  

The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or read more

The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy, that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

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  18  /  36  

The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from the read more

The draft is white people sending black people to fight yellow people to protect the country they stole from the red people.

by Hair Found in: Politics / government Quotes,
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  13  /  20  

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.

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  8  /  13  

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.

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  8  /  10  

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.

There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.

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  4  /  19  

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.

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  8  /  17  

The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that read more

The only kind of freedom that the mob can imagine is freedom to annoy and oppress its betters, and that is precisely the kind that we mainly have.

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  10  /  13  

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales!

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales!

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  9  /  8  

All that a good government aims at...is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own read more

All that a good government aims at...is to add no unnecessary and artificial aid to the force of its own unavoidable consequences, and to abstain from fortifying and accumulating social inequality as a means of increasing political inequalities.

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