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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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Democracy is the art of running the circus from the monkey cage.

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Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue read more

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In our own time we have seen domination spread over the social landscape to a point where it is beyond read more

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Justice is a concept. Muscle is the reality.

Justice is a concept. Muscle is the reality.

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Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing read more

Liberty is an opportunity for doing good, but this is only so when it is also an opportunity for doing wrong.

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  7  /  14  

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because read more

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The jury has a right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.

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...no civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.

...no civilized society can long exist, with an active power in its bosom that is stronger than the law.

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