It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist." in the context of "John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, in The History of Freedom in Antiquity (1877)" to mean that wisdom is timeless.