The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)
Context: 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, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.
“Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying "Enough!" He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable — this is Marcos.”
" The Majority Disguised as the Resented Minority http://www.greenleft.org.au/node/16118" (31 May 1994)
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Subcomandante Marcos 13
Mexican activist 1957Related quotes
Source: Yvette Herrell: Nancy Pelosi’s Majority in ‘Shambles,’ Gives GOP ‘Leverage’ https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020/11/11/yvette-herrell-nancy-pelosis-majority-in-shambles-gives-gop-leverage/ (11 November 2020)
Speaking to the House of Assembly on February 20, 1981, as cited by Andrew Donaldson, Sunday Times, 5 November 2006
Speech before the Federal Club http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/images/research/txtspeeches/581.pdf, New York City, (6 March 1891), as published in New York Daily Tribune (7 March 1891)
1890s
Context: Of recent years... representative government all over the world has been threatened with a growing paralysis. Legislative bodies have tended more and more to become wholly inefficient for the purposes of legislation. The prime feature in causing this unhealthy growth has been the discovery by minorities that under the old rules of parliamentary procedure they could put a complete stop to all legislative action... If the minority is as powerful as the majority there is no use of having political contests at all, for there is no use in having a majority.
Pedagogia do oprimido (Pedagogy of the Oppressed) (1968, English trans. 1970)
Peace and the Public Mind (1935)
Context: To shut our eyes to the part that John Smith plays in the perpetuation of unworkable policies, in building up the forces of which he becomes the victim, is to perpetuate his victimization. The only means by which he can be liberated from the evil power of organized minorities is by making him aware of the nature of the impulses and motives to which the exploiters so successfully appeal. If such phenomena as nationalism, for instance, can assume forms that are gravely dangerous, it is because the nationalist appeal finds response in deep human impulses, instincts, in psychological facts which we must face.
3.2, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)
(1917)
71. The Election of the Judiciary by The Workers
ABC's of Communism