Quotes about Majorities

One man with courage makes a majority.

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

Of all tyrannies a country can suffer, the worst is the tyranny of the majority.

A lot of voters always cast their ballot for the candidate who seems to them to be one of the people. That means he must have the same superstitions, the same unbalanced prejudices, and the same lack of understanding of public finances that are characteristic of the majority. A better choice would be a candidate who has a closer understanding and a better education than the majority. Too much voting is based on affability rather than on ability.

Decision by majorities is as much an expedient as lighting by gas.

The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority.

One on God's side is a majority.

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.

The moral majority is neither.

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.

One man with courage is a majority.

The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth.

The case with most men is that they go out into life with one or another accidental characteristic of personality of which they say: Well, this is the way I am. I cannot do otherwise. Then the world gets to work on them and thus the majority of men are ground into conformity. In each generation a small part cling to their "I cannot do otherwise" and lose their minds. Finally there are a very few in each generation who in spite of all life's terrors cling with more and more inwardness to this "I cannot do otherwise". They are the geniuses. Their "I cannot do otherwise" is an infinite thought, for if one were to cling firmly to a finite thought, he would lose his mind.

. . . Newton was an unquestioning believer in an all-wise creator of the universe, and in his own inability - like the boy on the seashore - to fathom the entire ocean in all its depths. He therefore believed that there were not only many things in heaven beyond his philosophy, but plenty on earth as well, and he made it his business to understand for himself what the majority of intelligent men of his time accepted without dispute (to them it was as natural as common sense) - the traditional account of the creation.

The great majority of people have a strong need for authority which they can admire, to which they can submit, and which dominates and sometimes even ill-treats them.

The Myth of the Angry White Male What has sprung up is a strange kind of thinking. . . . Americans are unhappy with their lot. They are feeling insecure - layoffs and corporate downsizing have made their future uncertain. Stirred up by talk radio, the theory goes, large numbers of formerly sensible people have embraced 'hate' and 'extremism.' Most of these, according to the media, are white guys. A Washington Post/ABC pre-election poll asked voters if they were angry 'about the way the federal government works.' Four out of five white males said no. 62 percent of white men voted for Republican House candidates (38 percent for Democrats in 1994, a ten-point increase from the 1990 midterm elections). But was this special to their gender? In 1994 white women voted for Republican House candidates by a 55 to 45 percent majority. Significantly, there isn't single article decrying 'angry white females.'

ENJOY YOUR LIFE: TURN OFF THE TV The image of America that comes to us in daily news broadcasts is a grim one, problems (real and faked), heartache, dysfunction and hardship. That is simply the nature of television news: crisis after crisis, a drumbeat of constant negativism. Millions upon millions of people in "real" America are enjoying the good things the nation has to offer have come to feel that their positive experiences are somehow the exception. The vast majority enjoy the best country in the history of the world. As an experiment, try going a month without watching any news. Don't watch the evening news, don't watch local news, don't watch political discussions. You will have a much more positive outlook about yourself and about America!

We are raising a generation that has a woefully small stock of ideas and interests and emotions. It must be amused at all costs but it has little skill in amusing itself. It pays some of its members to do what the majority can no longer do for themselves. It is this inner poverty that makes for the worst kind of boredom.

One man in the right will finally get to be a majority.

The more you love, the more you can love and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had time enough, he could love all of that majority who are decent and just.

The key to the age may be this, or that, or the other, as the young orators describe; the key to all ages is - Imbecility; imbecility in the vast majority of men, at all times, and, even in heroes, in all but certain eminent moments; victims of gravity,

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings.

The test of tolerance comes when we are in a majority; the test of courage comes when we are in a minority.

The truth is not always the same as the majority decision.

Imagine of all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stonewashed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on library shelves. And-since women are a majority of the population-we'd all be married to Mel Gibson.

The great questions of the time are not decided by speeches and majority decisions -that was the error of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood.

When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.

Before success comes in any man's life he is sure to meet with much temporary defeat and, perhaps, some failures. When defeat overtakes a man, the easiest and most logical thing to do is to quit. That is exactly what the majority of men do.

The majority of husbands remind me of an orangutan trying to play the violin.