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

March 6, 2025
Democracy is rarely beautiful in its workings, for the many refuse to be refined, restrained, and artistic.
February 19, 2025
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
June 11, 2025
The preservation of the means of knowledge (let me repeat that: the means of knowledge
Page 3 of 122