Quotes Library

January 30, 2025

When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong. The minority are right.

Eugene Debs (1855-1926), founder of the Socialist Party of America, Speeches (1928), Jay p.111

Are you ever part of this minority? Or are you usually—with the majority—on the wrong side of historical change? Or great principles? Recall three times you missed a chance to be with a minority that was right in the end?

Of course, because only a minority can see and appreciate the future at any one time, and never with complete accuracy. For the majority to change course, even when great changes are afoot all around, is as difficult as turning an ocean liner in mid-channel.


More Quotes

November 9, 2025
As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.
January 7, 2025
A secret in the Oxford sense: you may tell it to only one person at a time.
May 13, 2025
All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
Page 123 of 123