Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice.
Interpretation
Justice is not determined by the opinion of the majority or minority, but by its intrinsic fairness.
This quote by Lysander Spooner emphasizes that the concept of justice should be upheld regardless of popular opinion or the number of people supporting a particular viewpoint. True justice is an objective principle that should be applied consistently, instead of being swayed by the whims of majority or minority demographics, which may not reflect true fairness or moral correctness.
In practice
During a debate on social justice reforms, one could reference this quote to emphasize the importance of fairness over popular opinion.
The principle that the majority have a right to rule the minority, practically resolves all government into a mere contest between two bodies of men, as to which of them shall be masters, and which of them slaves; a contest, that-however bloody-can, in the nature of things, never be finally closed, so long as man refuses to be a slave.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
And the men who loan money to governments, so called, for the purpose of enabling the latter to rob, enslave, and murder their people, are among the greatest villains that the world has ever seen. And they as much deserve to be hunted and killed (if they cannot otherwise be got rid of) as any slave traders, robbers, or pirates that ever lived.
A married woman has the same natural right to acquire and hold property, and to make all contracts that she is mentally competent to make reasonably, as has a married man, or any other man.
Slavery, if it can be legalized at all, can be legalized only by positive legislation. Natural law gives it no aid. Custom imparts to it no legal sanction.
Those who deny the right of a jury to protect an individual in resisting an unjust law of the government, deny him all defence whatsoever against oppression.
There's an ancient tension between wanting to savor the world as it is and wanting to improve on the world as given.
I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction -- if a house is falling upon you, for instance -- one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one's eyes and wait, come what may . . .
Not only can no one predict the future, we don't understand the present - and there isn't even any certainty about the past.
The sin of fallen man is this: Man seeks the benefits of God while at the same time fleeing from God Himself.
People always say 'Etta, you know what your problem is? You're neither fish nor fowl. There is no place to rack you.' When I would go in a record shop, you might find one or two records by me in different stacks.
If we just sit and exist, and understand that, I think it will be helpful in a world that seems like a record that's going faster and faster, we're spinning off the edge of the universe.
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