A Quote by George William Curtis

Progress begins with the minority. It is completed by persuading the majority, by showing the reason and the of the step forward, and that is accomplished by appealing to the intelligence of the majority.

George William Curtis

Quote Topics

Accomplished Appealing Begins Completed Forward Intelligence Majority Minority Persuading Progress Reason Showing Step Step Forward

Quote Author

George William Curtis
American - Author
February 24, 1824 - August 31, 1892

It is only because the majority opinion will always be opposed by some that our knowledge and understanding progress... it is always from a minority acting in ways different from what the majority would prescribe that the majority in the end learns to do better.

Friedrich August von Hayek

Rules of Order state that ... No minority has a right to block a majority from conducting the legal business of the organisation .... but No majority has a right to prevent a minority from peacefully attempting to become the majority.

Robert M. Pirsig

[The Republican Party] for example, they do run the House of Representatives, they're a majority there, and it's the House that is essentially sending the government into shutdown and maybe default. But they won the majority of seats there because of various kinds of chicanery. They got a minority of the votes, but a majority of the seats, and they're using them to press forward an agenda which is extremely harmful to the public.

Noam Chomsky

The opinion of the majority or the minority is of no importance! The important thing is the opinion of the Truth, of the Reason, of the Logic, of the High Intelligence!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

In East, South and Central Africa, the minority manipulated the majority into believing the minority was the majority, that there were more whites in the world than blacks; instilled in the blacks a sense of inferiority, inadequacy, worthlessness.

Peter Abrahams

Majorities are of two sorts: (1) communal majority and (2) political majority. A political majority is changeable in its class composition. A political majority grows. A communal majority is born. The admission to a political majority is open. The door to a communal majority is closed. The politics of political majority are free to all to make and unmake. The politics of communal majority are made by its own members born in it.

B. R. Ambedkar

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

It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Our Constitution does not profess to have been established simply by the majority, but by 'the people' - the minority as much as the majority.

Lysander Spooner

A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority.

Eric Hoffer

A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.

Mary Parker Follett

We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

You'll never get progress in Washington until you have a majority, bipartisan majority, that really wants to solve problems.

Dick Durbin

If an action must be taken that will benefit the majority at the cost of the minority, is it morally indefensible? If an action taken for the benefit of a majority occurs at the expense of a minority, is it moral action?

Garth Nix

One has to give minority groups a kind of reward, an emotional reward, that it is worthwhile assimilating to this particular majority group. And if this majority group looks down on itself ... If a minority group is not given some pride in assimilating to the culture of another group then the process is very difficult.