Majority Vote Quotes & Sayings

Our oil-based society depends on non-renewable resources. It requires relentless probing into vast reaches of pristine land, sacrificing vital bioregions, and irreplaceable cultures. The possibility of catastrophic climate change is substantially increased by the 40 million barrels of oil burned every day by vehicles. We must all move shoulder to shoulder in a unified front to show this administration that the true majority of people are willing to vote for a cleaner environment and won't back down. — Leonardo DiCaprio

There is nothing wrong with someone who receives less than a majority of the vote being elected a representative. This is almost by definition the result in a system of proportional representation that elects multiple representatives from the same geographical unit and adopts voting rules that allow numerical minorities without the voting clout ever to win a race in a single-member district to elect a favorite in a multimember district. The designof multi-member institutions, like legislatures, offers many possibilities for creativity if one's desire is to maximize the number of people who feel some sense of genuine linkage with their putative "representatives. — Sanford Levinson

I think it is a simple statement of principle that in a democracy you should make your MPs work harder for your vote and try and get at least majority support in their local area, and that in a nutshell is what AV does. — Nick Clegg

How many votes does it take to get the United States of America firmly into the legal nightmare described in Gabriel's Stand? Sixty seven plus five. That is two-thirds of the US Senate (the House need not be consulted) and a five vote majority on the Supreme Court.

If we ever do something so suicidally foolish we will not have lost a war - it will just feel like it. — Jay B. Gaskill

Don't make decisions by majority vote. The majority is almost always wrong. — Adrian Rogers

No republic has long outlived the discovery by a majority of its people that they could vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. — Alexander Fraser Tytler

I think the Democrats are catering to them, but, you know, in the entire history of the United States of America, there has never been a judge who has been refused a vote when there was a majority of Senators willing to vote for his confirmation, never in history. — Pat Robertson

It's very much in our interest to unite [with Bernie Sanders] as quickly as possible to begin the campaign against Donald Trump. And I think the facts really speak for themselves. I have a won a big majority of the popular vote of the states, of pledged delegates, and we want to go forward in a positive and unified way. — Hillary Clinton

Although few people will remember 3 June 1993, it was a landmark in South African history. On that day, after months of negotiations at the World Trade Centre, the multiparty forum voted to set a date for the country's first national, nonracial, one-person-one-vote election: 27 April 1994. For the first time in South African history, the black majority would go to the polls to elect their own leaders. — Nelson Mandela

That Republicans now control the Senate means, of course, that they control the confirmation process. Their majority enables them to stop an unacceptable nomination at various points: They can deny the nominee a committee hearing; they can vote the person down in committee; they can refuse to schedule a vote on a nomination sent to the floor; and the full Senate can vote to reject the nomination. The Republicans' majority status also strengthens their negotiating position with the White House, making it more likely that a mutually acceptable candidate will be chosen for a given seat. — Terry Eastland

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. — Woodrow Wilson

The truth is not arrived at by majority vote. — Ken Follett

And for the majority of the country, Freedom did not include access to the sidewalks, the best schools and hospitals, decent farming land or the right to vote. It now seems completely clear to me, looking back, that when a government talks about "fighting for Freedom" almost every Freedom you can imagine disappears for ordinary people and expands limitlessly for a handful of people in power. — Alexandra Fuller

I have always been a fan of reality by majority vote — Stephen Colbert

When you are in the minority, talk; when you are in the majority, vote. — Roger Sherman

Be this as it may, they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made, should be the WORD OF GOD, and which should not. They rejected several; they voted others to be doubtful, such as the books called the Apocrypha; and those books which had a majority of votes, were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves Christians had believed otherwise; for the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other. — Thomas Paine

If you can get enough votes so that mine will make a majority, you can have it. — Calvin Coolidge

I believe the president wants this bill, and I know he's taken some steps to bring it about, ... The reality is that with a majority of the members of the House ready to vote for this bill, the speaker refused to call a roll call. — Joe Lieberman

The Democratic line is that the Republican House does nothing but block and oppose. In fact, it has passed hundreds of bills only to have them die upon reaching the desk of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He has rendered the Senate inert by simply ensuring that any bill that might present a politically difficult vote for his Democratic colleagues never even comes to the floor. — Charles Krauthammer

People keep saying someone should fix the system, the
system is corrupt. What they don't get is; they are the system. It's just like how people hate
McDonald's and Coca Cola. People say they are evil corporations, terrorists and ruining the
health of the future but then, how are these brands live and running all over the world,
making billions of dollars of profit every day? People still buy it, that's how. The majority of
the world is people who know something is bad for them but keep consuming it. If it's so
bad for you, why buy it? If the system is so bad, why do they vote for it? It's the people who
need to change not the leaders. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

Today we see social evil, terrorism, and gross immorality throughout the world. Someone has said, "A wrong deed is right if the majority of people declare it not to be wrong."
By this principle we can see our standards shifting
from year to year according to the popular vote!
This new permissiveness is condoned by intelligent men and women,
many of whom are found in the churches. — Billy Graham

The majority does rule. But it is a rather special kind of majority. It consists of a coalition of special interest minorities. The way to get elected to Congress is to collect groups of, say, 2 or 3 percent of your constituents, each of which is strongly interested in one special issue that hardly concerns the rest of your constituents. Each group will be willing to vote for you if you promise to back its issue regardless of what you do about other issues. Put together enough such groups and you will have a 51 percent majority. That is the kind of logrolling majority that rules the country. — Milton Friedman

Scientific questions cannot be decided by majority vote in any case. — Stephen Jay Gould

Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote. — Gary North

If there is no way to compel those who find a majority decision distasteful to go along with it, then the last thing one would want to do is to hold a vote: a public contest which someone will be seen to lose. Voting would be the most likely means to guarantee humiliations, resentments, hatreds, in the end, the destruction of communities. What is seen as an elaborate and difficult process of finding consensus is, in fact, a long process of making sure no one walks away feeling that their views have been totally ignored. — David Graeber

Thou shall not steal, even by majority vote ... — Gary North

Democracy, or "majority rules," is another trick of our society to force us to do things we don't want to do. Even if we actually lived in a pure democracy (and the system we do live in is not even close), where everyone got a single vote on every subject, forcing the minority to obey the majority is no different to one man, if he had the power, forcing everyone else to do what he wanted them to-simply because he could. — William J. Murray

Electing Barack Obama president was a glorious Jackie Robinson moment for the United States of America. Obama didn't just win; he became the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a popular-vote majority. — Timothy Noah

The great majority of women are more intelligent, better educated, and far more moral than multitudes of men whose right to vote no man questions. — Lucy Stone

If we reject, as we must, the doctrine that the majority is always right, to submit moral issues to the vote is to gamble that what we believe to be right will come out of the ballot with more votes behind it than what we believe to be wrong; and that is a gamble we will often lose. — Peter Singer

Over dinner, I had agreed to be her paladin, and no self-respecting paladin would decide on a course of action based on a majority vote of a committee of two. — Dean Koontz

The principles governing Western democracies, of which Israel rightly considers itself a part, are based on the assurance that everyone has a vote, but also that the minority needs to yield to the wishes of the majority. — Edgar Bronfman, Sr.

[We are] no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men. — Woodrow Wilson

With all of the talk about polling and demographics, I think too many people have lost touch with the human and moral crisis of deportations. Every day, roughly 1,000 people are deported because the Republican leadership of the House of Representatives is denying the majority of the US Congress a chance to vote on citizenship. I will be arrested today because the labor movement stands with the families tragically ripped apart by John Boehner and the House Republicans' embrace of a broken immigration system. — Arlene Holt Baker

One of the worst consequences politically would be for the majority of Democrats to vote for someone who, in the near future, would overturn well-established precedents on clean air, clean water, privacy, equal opportunity and religious liberty. — Ralph Neas

It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. — Ayn Rand

There are no standards of taste in wine ... Each man's own taste is the standard, and a majority vote cannot decide for him or in any slightest degree affect the supremacy of his own standard. — Mark Twain

Thou shalt not steal unless thou hast a majority vote in Congress ... I'm healthy; subsidized prescription drugs won't do me much good. I'd be willing to forego my prescription drugs if Congress would force some young American to mow my lawn. — Walter E. Williams

But I just knew, from everything that I saw, that there is no transcending the human experience. You've got to realize that most of us feel permanently displaced and savagely undone. Most of us try everything we can to manage our fears and our insecurities. Most of us are profoundly inhuman to ourselves and other people, and that makes us no less valuable, and no less worthy of attention and love. I didn't transcend all this stuff, you just got to live with them, man, and there's nothing like trying to run away from all that stuff to guarantee its supremacy. My idea is to change at least the percentage of the vote. These voices are always going to get a vote, but do they always have to have the majority of the vote? ... You try to distribute who you are in different proportions, but the transcendence myth will just do you in, in the long run. — Junot Diaz

The right to vote is a consequence, not a primary cause, of a free social system - and its value depends on the constitutional structure implementing and strictly delimiting the voters' power; unlimited majority rule is an instance of the principle of tyranny. — Ayn Rand

We go by the major vote, and if the majority are insane, the sane must go to the hospital. — Horace Mann

The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not sendmen to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty, ... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them. — Henry David Thoreau

Truth cannot be decided by the vote of the majority because truth is utterly individual and private. — Osho

Statistics should be substituted for truth, vote-counting for principles, numbers for rights, and public polls for morality - that pragmatic, range-of-the-moment expediency should be the criterion of a country's interests, and that the number of its adherents should be the criterion of an idea's truth or falsehood - that any desire of any nature whatsoever should be accepted as a valid claim, provided it is held by a sufficient number of people - that a majority may do anything it pleases to a minority - in short, gang rule and mob rule — Ayn Rand

Though it is disguised by the illusion that a bureaucracy accountable to a majority of voters, and susceptible to the pressure of organized minorities, is not exercising compulsion, it is evident that the more varied and comprehensive the regulation becomes, the more the state becomes a despotic power as against the individual. For the fragment of control over the government which he exercises through his vote is in no effective sense proportionate to the authority exercised over him by the government. — Walter Lippmann

I wasn't around, and I guess if I had been, I would have been part of the oppressor class and think it was the way things should be. But I have been told that things are a lot better now. I won't say they're perfect. Things don't get perfect. But most of the women I know are happy. They don't think there's many battles left to fight." "You'd better stop there," Robin cautioned. "Most women have always been happy with the way things were, or at least they said so. That goes back to before peckish society allowed women to vote. Just because we of the Coven believe some things that I now know are overstated or incorrect, don't draw the conclusion that we are foolish about everything. We know that the majority is always willing to let things remain as they are until they are led to something better. A slave may not be happy with her lot, but most do nothing to improve it. Most do not believe it can be improved. — John Varley

When a legislature decides to steal some of our rights and plans to use police force to accomplish it, what's the real difference between them and the thief? Darn little! They hide behind the excuse that they're legislating democratically. The fact they do it by a majority vote has no moral significance whatsoever. Numerical might does not constitute right, no more than a lynch mob can justify its act because a majority participated. — H. L. Richardson

Why don't Republicans spend all their airtime attacking the media for lying about what Obama's amnesty does and what the Democrats are doing? It's hard to avoid concluding that Republicans aren't trying to make the right arguments. In fact, it kind of looks like they're intentionally throwing the fight on amnesty. If a Republican majority in both houses of Congress can't stop Obama from issuing illegal immigrants Social Security cards and years of back welfare payments, there is no reason to vote Republican ever again. — Ann Coulter

A majority vote is not an epistemological validation of an idea. Voting is merely a proper political device
within a strictly, constitutionall y delimited sphere of action
for choosing the practical means of implementing a society's basic principles. But those principles are not determined by vote. — Ayn Rand

The vast majority of a significant portion of Americans of Hispanic descent will vote - happen to be working class people who are desperate to not only achieve the American dream but leave their kids better off than themselves. — Marco Rubio

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

How have a hundred men who wish for a master the right to vote on behalf of ten who do not? The law of majority voting is itself something established by convention, and presupposes unanimity, on one occasion at least. 6. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

the Eight Percent Rule to McCann. "It's really very simple," he said, using the same melodic voice he used to pet and stroke the jury. "I have to convince one juror out of twelve to vote with us. One of twelve is eight percent, give or take. Not that I need to convince him our client is innocent, understand. I just need to establish an intimate partnership with that one fellow or lady in a crowd who is contrary. The man or woman who has an ax to grind. My theory, and you saw it happen twice, is that in any group of people forced to be together, at least eight percent of them will go against the majority if for no other reason than to shove it up their ass - if they have an authority figure they can trust to be on their side. I am that leader in the courtroom. — C.J. Box

There is apparently nowhere a workable majority in the representative assemblies for making the specific cuts in expenditure which could bring down the taxes, and in election after election the people vote into power representatives who are as unable as they are unwilling to do anything about it. — Gunnar Myrdal

Truth is not determined by a majority vote. — Pope Benedict XVI

There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. — Henry David Thoreau

When we vote to leave, I think a majority of people in Scotland will also vote to leave as well. — Michael Gove

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the people discover they can vote themselves largess out of the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the canidate promising the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over a loose fiscal policy
to be followed by a dictatorship. — Alexander Fraser Tytler

Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? ... Isn't it bad public policy? ... No politician with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May. — Russell Baker

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote. A majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority. The political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities, and the smallest minority on earth is the individual. — Ayn Rand

We should be unfaithful to ourselves if we should ever lose sight of the danger to our Liberties if anything partial or extraneous should infect the purity of our free, fair, virtuous, and independent elections. If an election is to be determined by a majority of a single vote, and that can be procured by a party through artifice or corruption, the Government may be the choice of a party for its own ends, not of the nation for the national good. — John Adams

Majorities can be wrong, majorities can overrule rights of minorities. If majorities ruled, we could still have slavery. 80% of the population once enslaved 20% of the population. While run by majority rule that is ok. That is very flawed notion of what democracy is. Democracy has to take into account several things - proportionate requirements of people, not just needs of the majority, but also needs of the minority. Majority, especially in societies where the media manipulates public opinion, can be totally wrong and evil. People have to act according to conscience and not by majority vote. — Howard Zinn

Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this. — William G. Boykin

What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it ... which for the majority translates as 'Bread and Circuses'. — Robert A. Heinlein

Now these fellows in Washington wouldn't be so serious and particular if they only had to vote on what they thought was good for the majority of the people in the U.S. That would be a cinch. But what makes it hard for them is every time a bill comes up they have things to decide that have nothing to do with the merit of the bill. The principal thing is of course: What will this do for me personally back home? — Will Rogers

Moral principles do not depend on a majority vote. Wrong is wrong, even if everybody is wrong. Right is right, even if nobody is right. — Fulton J. Sheen

As a contrast to this kind of democracy we have the German democracy, which is a true democracy; for here the leader is freely chosen and is obliged to accept full responsibility for all his actions and omissions. The problems to be dealt with are not put to the vote of the majority; but they are decided upon by the individual, and as a guarantee of responsibility for those decisions he pledges all he has in the world and even his life. — Adolf Hitler

Divine Law is not subject nor affected by the majority vote of humanity — Myles Munroe

George W. Bush, 43rd president of the United States, became the first incumbent president to increase his majority in both the Senate and the House and to increase his own vote (by over 3.5 million) since Franklin D. Roosevelt, political genius of the 20th century, in 1936. — Peggy Noonan

Even before winning its majority, Harper's Republican-styl e Conservative party - well to the right Canada's traditional Progressive Conservative Party - managed to win minority governments with less than 40 per cent of the popular vote. — Linda McQuaig

It is easy enough to vote right and be consistently with the majority. But it is more often more important to be ahead of the majority and this means being willing to cut the first furrow in the ground and stand alone for a while if necessary. — Patsy Mink

Our middle class majority, deeply in personal debt, elects political leaders who increase our benefits. Then we vote them out because we dislike the soaring national debt. — Oliver DeMille

Most Americans, who think Congress has a right to do anything for which they can get a majority vote, ignore the clearly written constitutional restraints on Congress. — Walter E. Williams

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

Truth is not determined by majority vote. — Douglas Gwyn

The next little thing about this vote-for-the-lesser-evil trick, of course - and this is no secret to anyone anymore - is that it drives all the "serious" candidates toward what is commonly referred to as the "moderate center," even if these serious candidates aren't, in fact, moderate or centrist in any meaningful sense and the so-called center moves further to the right with each election cycle. For nearly two decades now this process has been steadily advancing on the Democratic side, as liberals are trained to accept the idea that the national majority will never accept a true labor party, or any candidate perceived as "soft" on defense. — Matt Taibbi

The marks of truth, as Christianly conceived, are that it is supernaturally grounded not developed within nature; that it is objective and not subjective; that it is a revelation and not a construction; that it is discovered by inquiry and not elected by a majority vote; that it is authoritative and not a matter of personal choice. — Harry Blamires

Democracy was a terrifying concept for the old world of Europe, and even the new world of North America, where income inequality was rife. The finest minds of the nineteenth century warned against giving the vote to the workingman, for fear of mob rule or the tyranny of the majority. — George Megalogenis

Women would then need to resort to the ballot box to request that protection - assuming the majority sees fit to give them the right/privilege to vote. — Timothy Sandefur

The American people are going to judge the majority party here today. If they go out here and vote for this rule that allows this provision to be stricken, they are voting against the men and women in the military of our country. — Norm Dicks

The way we've set up corporations, even a majority vote of stockholders cannot demand that a corporation's policies reflect the public good or preserve the environment for future use. That's because profit is the one and only motive. It's up to government and it's up to people to protect the public interest. Corporations are simply not allowed to. — David Suzuki

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing. — Walter Judd

Decision by democratic majority vote is a fine form of government, but it's a stinking way to create. — Lillian Hellman

Bush won the largest popular vote in history with a 3.5 million margin. Indeed, simply by getting a majority of the country to vote for him - the left's most hated politician since Richard Nixon - Bush did something rock star Bill Clinton never did. Bush maintained or increased his vote in every state but Vermont. — Ann Coulter

There is a reason the Democrats have had only two Presidents since 1968 and have managed to lose control of both houses of Congress in recent years. There is a reason they keep snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. And it's not fraud and it's not dirty politics and it's not stupid voters. It's the plain and simple fact that the majority of those who vote don't like them. — Pat Sajak

After invoking the language and symbols of religion to bypass reason and convince the country to go to war, Bush found it increasingly necessary to disdain and dispute inconvenient facts that began to surface in public discussions. He sometimes seemed to wage war against reason itself in his effort to deny obvious truths that were totally inconsistent with the false impressions the nation had been given prior to making the decision to invade. He and his team seemed to approach every question of fact as a partisan fight to the finish. Those who questioned the faulty assumptions on which the war was based were attacked as unpatriotic. Those who pointed to the forged evidence and glaring inconsistencies were accused of supporting terrorism. One of Bush's congressional allies, John Boehner, then House majority leader, said, If you want to let the terrorists win in Iraq, just vote for the Democrats. — Al Gore

Democracy is about voting and it's about a majority vote. And it's time that we started exercising the Democratic process. — Debbie Stabenow

A majority of Americans want redemption for racism - for our terrible, destructive racist past - and so see a vote for Obama as redemptive. — Gloria Steinem

It is not always that the majority are right in a vote of a certain event. If that certain event was with no doubt acceptable to human nature then the minority would not exist. — Nathanael Kanyinga

A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority. There is but little virtue in the action of masses of men. When the majority shall at length vote for the abolition of slavery, it will be because they are indifferent to slavery, or because there is but little slavery left to be abolished by their vote. They will then be the only slaves. Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote. — Henry David Thoreau

Liberals had tried convincing Americans to vote for them, but that kept ending badly. Except for Lyndon Johnson's aberrational 1964 landslide, Democrats have not been able to get a majority of white people to vote for them in any presidential election since 1948.13 Their only hope was to bring in new voters. Okay, fine. You won't vote for us, America? We tried this the easy way, but you give us no choice. We're going to overwhelm you with new voters from the Third World. As Democratic consultant Patrick Reddy wrote for the Roper Center in 1998: "The 1965 Immigration Reform Act promoted by President Kennedy, drafted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and pushed through the Senate by Ted Kennedy has resulted in a wave of immigration from the Third World that should shift the nation in a more liberal direction within a generation. It will go down as the Kennedy family's greatest gift to the Democratic Party."14 — Ann Coulter

Although America loved its tough guys, they weren't ready to vote for leaders who exhibited no compassion for the downtrodden and miserable, for on any given day they might constitute a majority. — David Baldacci

Cast your whole vote, not a piece of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless when it conforms to a majority; but is irresistable when it clogs by its whole weight. If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose. — Henry David Thoreau

We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is right-but is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of them-most people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation-they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live. — David Gerrold