Quotes Library

October 22, 2025

Minorities…are almost always in the right.

Sydney Smith (1771–1845), English clergyman, essayist, H. Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (1934), Jay p.344

Was not the early Greek philosopher Heraclitus right, that all the world is in flux? And is it not true that most change is incremental, and that change-agents begin as a tiny group that grows? That this minority—who first broached the change that so many other have embraced over time—is then (almost) always right?

Right, as to substance, maybe. But right because they have the right to exist, absolutely.


More Quotes

October 11, 2025
The second law, Rakove’s law of principle and politics, states that the citizen is influenced by principle
March 14, 2025
[Of political life] The hatreds which sound so real when you read the words, which look so true when you see their scornful attitudes
July 8, 2025
…see how sensitive the citizens become: they chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority and at length
Page 114 of 122