Majority Quotes - Page 25

• Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes fifty years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Dog, Jesus, Believe

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• The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widely spread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

  Bertrand Russell

  Learning, Knowledge, Parenting

  Marriage and Morals ch. 5 (1929)

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• The real tragedy of our postcolonial world is not that the majority of people had no say in whether or not they wanted this new world; rather, it is that the majority have not been given the tools to negotiate this new world.

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

  Real, People, Tragedy

  FaceBook post by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie from Jun 30, 2010

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• The great majority of people are “wandering generalities” rather than “meaningful specifics”. The fact is that you can't bit a target that you can't see. If you don't know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else. You have to have goals.

  Zig Ziglar

  Leadership, Meaningful, Somewhere Else

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• The one distinct feature of our Association has been the right of the individual opinion for every member. We have been beset at every step with the cry that somebody was injuring the cause by the expression of some sentiments that differed with those held by the majority of mankind. The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires.

  Susan B. Anthony

  Religious, Expression, People

  Speech at a meeting of the National-American Woman Suffrage Association Convention, www.thelizlibrary.org. 1896.

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• Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn’t notice they were brain damaged? Az - We didn’t have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise. History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn’t a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we’re just a bit easier to manage.

  Scott Westerfeld

  War, Cutting, Sheep

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• The god which the vast majority of professing Christians love is looked upon very much like an indulgent old man, who himself has no relish for folly, but leniently winks at the indiscretions of youth...For one sin God banished our first parents from Eden; for one sin all the posterity of Canaan fell under a curse which remains over them to this day; for one sin Moses was excluded form the promised land; Elisha’s servant smitten with leprosy; Ananias and Sapphira were cut off from the land of the living.

  Arthur W. Pink

  Christian, Cutting, Love Is

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• The majority of people are ready to throw their aims and purposes overboard, and give up at the first sign of opposition or misfortune. A few carry on DESPITE all opposition, until they attain their goal. These few are the Fords, Carnegies, Rockefellers, and Edisons. There may be no heroic connotation to the word persistence, but the quality is to the character of man what carbon is to steel.

  Napoleon Hill

  Giving Up, Character, Persistence

  Napoleon Hill (2012). “Napoleon Hill Collection”, p.113, Penguin

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• War happens to people, one by one. That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever. Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

  Martha Gellhorn

  War, Imagination, People

  "Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life". Book by Caroline Moorehead, 2003.

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• We all have to lead our own life, and we only have the one life, and the only people who can live life not according to their own desires are those who have no desires--which is the majority, actually. People can say what they like, they can speak of abnegation, sacrifice, generosity, acceptance, and resignation, but it's all false. The norm is for people to think that they desire whatever comes to them, whatever they achieve along the way or whatever is given to them--they have no preconceived desires.

  Javier Marías

  Live Life, Acceptance, Sacrifice

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• Oh, yes--you can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has might on its side--unfortunately; but right it has not.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Yes You Can, Answers, Might

  Henrik Ibsen (2012). “An Enemy of the People”, p.59, Courier Corporation

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• What sort of truths are they that the majority usually supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen.

  Henrik Ibsen

  Lying, Support, Gentleman

  Henrik Ibsen (2009). “An Enemy of the People: A Play in Five Acts”, p.150, The Floating Press

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• The will of the people, moreover, practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people; the majority, or those who succeed in making themselves accepted as the majority; type people, consequently, may desire to oppress a part of their number; and precautions are as much needed against this as against any other abuse of power.

  John Stuart Mill

  Mean, Numbers, People

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• Sadly, at a time when so much sophisticated cultural criticism by hip intellectuals from diverse locations extols a vision of cultural hybridity, border crossing, subjectivity constructed out of plurality, the vast majority of folks in this society still believe in a notion of identity that is rooted in a sense of essential traits and characteristics that are fixed and static.

  Bell Hooks

  Believe, Vision, Criticism

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• The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door; On her divine majority Obtrude no more.

  Emily Dickinson

  Doors, Soul, Divine

  "The Soul selects her own society" l. 1 (ca. 1862)

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• It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now--independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one's own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one's neighbors--are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Self, Risk, Independence

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• It is not difficult to deprive the great majority of independent thought. But the minority who will retain an inclination to criticize must also be silenced....Public criticism or even expressions of doubt must be suppressed because they tend to weaken pubic support....When the doubt or fear expressed concerns not the success of a particular enterprise but of the whole social plan, it must be treated even more as sabotage.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Independent, Expression, Support

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• Democracy is reproached with saying that the majority is always right. But progress says that the minority is always right.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Democracy, Progress, Minorities

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• There was always a minority afraid of something, and a great majority afraid of the dark, afraid of the future, afraid of the past, afraid of the present, afraid of themselves and shadows of themselves

  Ray Bradbury

  Dark, Past, Shadow

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “The Martian Chronicles”, p.140, Simon and Schuster

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• There’s only one question that matters, Ms. Lane, and it’s the one you never get around to asking. People are capable of varying degrees of truth. The majority spend their entire lives fabricating an elaborate skein of lies, immersing themselves in the faith of bad faith, doing whatever it takes to feel safe. The person who truly lives has precious few moments of safety, learns to thrive in any kind of storm. It’s the truth you can stare down stone-cold that makes you what you are. Weak or strong. Live or die. Prove yourself. How much truth can you take, Ms. Lane?

  Karen Marie Moning

  Strong, Lying, People

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.864, Dell

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• Oh God, the terrible tyranny of the majority. We all have our harps to play. And it's up to you to know with which ear you'll listen.

  Ray Bradbury

  Play, Tyranny Of The Majority, Up To You

  Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.53, Hamilton Books

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• I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Determination, Military, War

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• But remember that the Captain belongs to the most dangerous enemy to truth and freedom, the solid unmoving cattle of the majority

  Ray Bradbury

  Enemy, Captains, Remember

  Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.53, Hamilton Books

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• Sometimes I aint so sho who's got ere a right to say when a man is crazy and when he aint. Sometimes I think it aint none of us pure crazy and aint none of us pure sane until the balance of us talks him that-a-way. It's like it aint so much what a fellow does, but it's the way the majority of folks is looking at him when he does it.

  William Faulkner

  Crazy, Men, Thinking

  William Faulkner (1955). “Faulkner's county: tales of Yoknapatawpha county”

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• Strange as my circumstances were, the terms of this debate are as old and commonplace as man; much the same inducements and alarms cast the die for any tempted and trembling sinner; and it fell out with me, as it falls with so vast a majority of my fellows, that I chose the better part and was found wanting in the strength to keep to it.

  Robert Louis Stevenson

  Fall, Men, Alarms

  Robert Louis Stevenson (2005). “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, second edition”, p.86, Broadview Press

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