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Full Idea
Human concerns are not so happily arranged that the majority favours the better things.
Gist of Idea
Unfortunately the majority do not tend to favour what is best
Source
Seneca the Younger (On the Happy Life [c.60], §02)
Book Ref
Seneca: 'Dialogues and Essays', ed/tr. Davie,John [Penguin 2007], p.86
A Reaction
On the whole Seneca is unimpressed by democracy, as people are rushed into decisions by the crowd, and live to regret them.
Related Ideas
Idea 2823 The many may add up to something good, even if they are inferior as individuals [Aristotle]
Idea 2826 Like water, large numbers of people are harder to corrupt than a few [Aristotle]
| 22575 | Ultimate democracy is tyranny [Aristotle] |
| 5895 | If one despises illiterate mechanics individually, they are not worth more collectively [Cicero] |
| 13557 | Unfortunately the majority do not tend to favour what is best [Seneca] |
| 19828 | Democracy leads to internal strife, as people struggle to maintain or change ways of ruling [Rousseau] |
| 19835 | When ministers change the state changes, because they always reverse policies [Rousseau] |
| 22394 | Democracy diminishes mankind, making them mediocre and lowering their value [Nietzsche] |
| 18331 | Democracy is organisational power in decline [Nietzsche] |
| 23166 | In democracy we are more aware of being governed than of our tiny share in government [Russell] |
| 23169 | Democratic institutions become impossible in a fanatical democracy [Russell] |
| 21527 | On every new question the majority is always wrong at first [Russell] |
| 21526 | Unfortunately ordinary voters can't detect insincerity [Russell] |
| 23842 | Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil] |
| 7594 | Democrats are committed to a belief and to its opposite, if the majority prefer the latter [Scruton] |