The conception that government should be guided by majority opinion makes sense only if that opinion is independent of government. The ideal of democracy rests on the belief that the view which will direct government emerges from an independent and spontaneous process. It requires, therefore, the existence of a large sphere independent of majority control in which the opinions of the individuals are formed.
Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.
Majority opinion often influences individuals regardless of institutional safeguards.
The first need is to free ourselves of that worst form of contemporary obscurantism which tries to persuade us that what we have done in the recent past was al…
In no other field has the world yet paid so dearly for the abandonment of nineteenth-century liberalism as in the field where the retreat began: in internation…
Economic control is not merely control of a sector of human life which can be separated from the rest; it is the control of the means for all our ends. And who…
You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, a…
... for Englishmen never will be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allows them to do.
While democracy must have its organizations and controls, its vital breath is individual liberty.