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

May 20, 2025
Politics must redress the natural injustice of history.
April 7, 2025
01:01
What is truth? We must adopt a pragmatic definition: it is what is believed to be true.
October 16, 2025
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Page 31 of 124