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

January 12, 2025
It is a great error to speak of the things of this world absolutely and indiscriminately and to deal with them,
May 29, 2025
The whole duty of government is to prevent crime and to preserve contracts.
January 16, 2025
[On Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom] A plan to resist all planning may be better than its opposite, but it belongs to the same style of politics.
Page 40 of 63