“The test of liberty is the position and security of minorities.”

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play.

But when modern absolutism arose, it laid claim to everything on behalf of the sovereign power….

If the past has been an obstacle and a burden, knowledge of the past is the safest and the surest emancipation.

A wise person does at once, what a fool does at last. Both do the same thing; only at different times.

When the revolutionary theory of government began to prevail, and Church and State found that they were educating for opposite ends and in a contradictory spirit, it became necessary to remove children entirely from the influence of religion.

In England Parliament is above the law. In America the law is above Congress.

Those who have more power are liable to sin more; no theorem in geometry is more certain than this.

The science of politics is the one science that is deposited by the streams of history, like the grains of gold in the sand of a river; and the knowledge of the past, the record of truths revealed by experience, is eminently practical, as an instrument of action and a power that goes to making the future.

Be generous before you are just. Do not temper mercy with justice.

Though oppression may give rise to violent and repeated outbreaks, like the convulsions of a man in pain, it cannot mature a settled purpose and plan of regeneration, unless a new notion of happiness is joined to the sense of present evil.

The long term versus the short term argument is one used by losers.

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it.

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act but I do not believe we should institutionalize a form of discrimination against any minority by amending the Constitution.

We never said that the majority [of the terrorists] are not Syrians, but we said that the minority is what they call “free Syrian army.” That’s what we said.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities.

At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities, that have prevailed by associating themselves with auxiliaries whose objects often differed from their own; and this association, which is always dangerous, has sometimes been disastrous.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play.

We use the minorities of the North as willing tools and the South as a conquered territory and never allow them to rule over us, and never allow them to have control over their future.

Anywhere else is a horribly dangerous time for women and minorities.

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.