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.
June 14, 2025
Free speech is about as good a cause as the world has ever known.
February 7, 2025
00:58
I will govern according to the common weal [meaning welfare], but not according to the common will.
Page 98 of 124