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

June 10, 2025
The trouble with the Conservative Party is that it has not turned back the clock a single second.
March 25, 2025
History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
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 45 of 63