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 7, 2025
The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor
February 7, 2025
00:58
I will govern according to the common weal [meaning welfare], but not according to the common will.
November 10, 2025
No one is decently treated in poor clothes.
Page 4 of 122