A great empire and little minds go ill together.
Edmund BurkeRead
In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.
Interpretation
Democracy can lead to the tyranny of the majority over the minority.
This quote by Edmund Burke highlights the potential danger inherent in democratic systems, where the will of the majority can overpower and unjustly oppress minority groups. It serves as a cautionary reminder that democracy, while promoting equality and representation, can sometimes facilitate the very oppression it seeks to avoid if the rights of minorities are not protected.
In practice
During a lecture on political philosophy, this quote can be used to discuss the balance between majority rule and minority rights.
A great empire and little minds go ill together.
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.
The hottest fires in hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in times of moral crisis.
Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.
Are your convictions so fragile that mine cannot stand in opposition to them? Is your God so illusory that the presence of my Devil reveals his insufficiency?
Do we want to be remembered as the generation that saved the banks and let the biosphere collapse?
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence; its giddiness, like that which comes from gazing down into an infinite abyss, is infinite.
The nonconformist here may be "beat down" by life but still has a beauty in his or her longing for freedom and for an awakening of the mind.
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