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

September 20, 2025
Never lose your temper with the Press or the public is a major rule of political life.
March 20, 2025
No more distressing moment can ever face a British government than that which requires it to come to a hard, fast and specific decision.
November 15, 2025
All ceremonial is ridiculous unless it is perfect.
Page 28 of 122