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Democracy is nothing more than mob rule...(Spurious Quotation)

Quotation: "Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%."

Variations:

  1. "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51 percent of the people may take away the rights of the other 49."
  2. "A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine."

Sources consulted: Searching on the phrase "mob rule"

  1. Monticello website
  2. Founders Online
  3. Quotable Jefferson
  4. Bartleby.com: Quotations

Earliest known appearance in print: 2004[1][2]

Other attributions: None known.

Status: We currently have no evidence to confirm that Thomas Jefferson ever said or wrote, "Democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where 51% of the people may take away the rights of the other 49%" or any of its listed variations. We do not know the source of this statement's attribution to Thomas Jefferson.

Anchor

Further Sources

References

  1. ^ George Wetherington, letter to the editor, New Bern (NC) Sun Journal, January 4, 2004. Note that this is the earliest occurrence of the quote found so far, but it is clear the writer had seen the quote in an earlier source, which has yet to be identified.
  2. ^ To establish the earliest appearance of this phrase in print, the following sources were searched for the phrase, "democracy is nothing more than mob rule": Google Books, Google Scholar, Amazon.com, Internet Archive, America's Historical Newspapers, American Broadsides and Ephemera Series I, Early American Imprints Series I and II, Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, American Periodicals Series Online, JSTOR, NewspaperArchive.

Spurious Quotations

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