Favorite Quotations. 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. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others Human history begins with man's act of disobedience which is at the very same time the beginning of his freedom and development of his reason never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion, in philosophy, in politics or in anything else, where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to Heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.