Minority Quotes

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).”
― Mark Twain

“When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“There are two circumstances that lead to arrogance: one is when you're wrong and you can't face it; the other is when you're right and nobody else can face it.”
― Criss Jami, Diotima, Battery, Electric Personality

“Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion — and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion… while truth again reverts to a new minority.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“Black and Third World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”
― Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

“It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”
― Samuel Adams

“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas

“The most dangerous people in the world are not the tiny minority instigating evil acts, but those who do the acts for them. For example, when the British invaded India, many Indians accepted to work for the British to kill off Indians who resisted their occupation. So in other words, many Indians were hired to kill other Indians on behalf of the enemy for a paycheck. Today, we have mercenaries in Africa, corporate armies from the western world, and unemployed men throughout the Middle East killing their own people - and people of other nations - for a paycheck. To act without a conscience, but for a paycheck, makes anyone a dangerous animal. The devil would be powerless if he couldn't entice people to do his work. So as long as money continues to seduce the hungry, the hopeless, the broken, the greedy, and the needy, there will always be war between brothers.”
― Suzy Kassem

“I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.

There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.”
― Michael Crichton

“I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. (p. 102)”
― Cornel West, Race Matters

“When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.”
― Joel Salatin, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front

“In the great cities we see so little of the world, we drift into our minority. In the little towns and villages there are no minorities; people are not numerous enough. You must see the world there, perforce. Every man is himself a class; every hour carries its new challenge. When you pass the inn at the end of the village you leave your favourite whimsy behind you; for you will meet no one who can share it. We listen to eloquent speaking, read books and write them, settle all the affairs of the universe. The dumb village multitudes pass on unchanging; the feel of the spade in the hand is no different for all our talk: good seasons and bad follow each other as of old. The dumb multitudes are no more concerned with us than is the old horse peering through the rusty gate of the village pound. The ancient map-makers wrote across unexplored regions, 'Here are lions.' Across the villages of fishermen and turners of the earth, so different are these from us, we can write but one line that is certain, 'Here are ghosts.' ("Village Ghosts")”
― W.B. Yeats, The Celtic Twilight: Faerie and Folklore

“I would remind you to notice where the claim of consensus is invoked. Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough. Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way.”
― Michael Crichton

“The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report

“Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art. Only on the margins does growth occur.”
― Joanna Russ

“He who knows he is a fool is not the biggest fool; he who knows he is confused is not in the worst confusion. The man in the worst confusion will end his life without ever getting straightened out; the biggest fool will end his life without ever seeing the light. If three men are traveling along and one is confused, they will still get where they are going - because confusion is in the minority. But if two of them are confused, then they can walk until they are exhausted and never get anywhere - because confusion is in the majority.”
― Zhuangzi, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu

“...a minority is only thought of as a minority if it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary...Just ask yourselves: what would this particular minority do if it suddenly became the majority, overnight?
'All right - now along come the liberals - including everybody in the room, I trust - and they say, 'minorities are just people, like us '. Sure, minorities are people, just like us'. Sure, minorities are people; people , not angels. Sure, they're like us - but not exactly like us; that's the all-too-familiar state of liberal hysteria, in which you begin to kid yourself you honestly cannot see a difference between a Negro and a Swede -'
(Why, oh why daren't George say 'between Estelle Oxford and Buddy Sorensen'? Maybe, if he did dare, there would be a great atomic blast of laughter, and everybody would embrace, and the kingdom of heaven would begin, right here in the classroom 278. But then, again, maybe it wouldn't.)
'So,let's face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and think differently from us, and have faults we don't have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it's better if we admit to disliking and hating them, than if we try to smear out feelings over with pseudo-liberal sentimentality. If we're frank about our feelings, we have a safety-valve; and if we have a safety-valve, we're actually less likely to start persecuting...”
― Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

“There is a view of life which conceives that where the crowd is, there is also truth. There is another view of life which conceives that wherever there is a crowd, there is untruth.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The Nazis were not right to hate the Jews. But their hating of Jews was not without a cause. No one ever hates without a cause.”
― Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man

“I've never been part of the minority before, never have had to struggle to belong, so I figured I'd milk the experience for all it was worth. Don't they say adversity builds character?”
― Apol Lejano-Massebieau

“Concentrated power can be always wielded in the interest of the few and at the expense of the many. Government in its last analysis is this power reduced to a science. Governments never lead; they follow progress. When the prison, stake or scaffold can no longer silence the voice of the protesting minority, progress moves on a step, but not until then.”
― Lucy Parsons

“According to House minority leader Richard Gephardt: “What we have is two important values in direct conflict: freedom of speech and our desire for healthy campaigns in a healthy democracy.”
― Thomas Sowell, Controversial Essays

“Since the Civil War, American Jews have built a place for themselves here much the way other minorities have-by holding the United States accountable to its own principles”
― Adam Serwer, The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump's America

“Will we become a minority in our own country?”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Democracy was never anything but a contingent hodge podge of basis thoughts haphazardly slapped together in the minds of starry-eyed philosophers who infinitely outweighed the value of Mob Man's voice to that of The Genius.”
― Lil Low-Cu$$'t, The Swarm

“It's as if readers relish white male writers behaving badly but they demand that minority writers must always be good.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“The value of free speech lies not just in the protection of popular opinions but in the shelter it provides for dissenting voices. It is the force that guards against the tyranny of majority thought, ensuring that minority perspectives are not silenced but are given a fair hearing. The true strength of a society is measured by its willingness to embrace discomfort, confront challenging ideas, and forge consensus through open dialogue rather than stifling dissent.”
― James William Steven Parker

“He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the earth goes round the sun; today, to believe that the past is inalterable. He might be ALONE in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him: the horror was that he might also be wrong.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“There are so few Jews in the world: even in the United States, we are barely 2 percent of the population, a minority among minorities... Statistically speaking, nothing that happens to Jews should be of any consequence to anyone else.
Except that it is.”
― Dara Horn, People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present