Edmund Burke on the oppression of the minority in a democratic system:

Of this I am certain, that in a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority; whenever strong divisions prevail in that kind of polity, as they often must; and that oppression of the minority will extend to far greater numbers, and will be carried on with much greater fury, than can almost ever be apprehended from the dominion of a single scepter. In such a popular persecution, individual sufferers are in a much more deplorable condition than any other.

Qtd. in Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left