Minorities Quotes - Page 10

• Truth is for the minority.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Truth, Truth Is

  23 Copy quote

• By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest... The latent causes of faction are sown in the nature of man.

  James Madison

  Passion, Men, Numbers

  "Federalist No. 10 (The Federalist Papers)". Essay by James Madison, November 23, 1787.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Parliamentary government is simply a mild and disguised form of compulsion. We agree to try strength by counting heads instead of breaking heads, but the principle is exactly the same... The minority gives way not because it is convinced that it is wrong, but because it is convinced that it is a minority.

  James Fitzjames Stephen

  Government, Giving, Trying

  James Fitzjames Stephen (1991). “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: And Three Brief Essays”, p.70, University of Chicago Press

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a logical absurdity to equate democracy with freedom in the way that mainstream political philosophers and commentators typically do. A system where individuals and minorities are at the mercy of unconstrained majorities hardly constitutes freedom in any meaningful sense.

  Keith Preston

  Meaningful, Political, Democracy

  4 Copy quote

• One of the most important of all the causes of great inequality of income is the inheritance of a great fortune by a small minority.

  Hugh Dalton

  Important, Income, Inheritance

  7 Copy quote

• If we assume that the purpose of the economy is to serve and improve the welfare of the entire body of citizens, the U.S. model has clearly been a major failure. It has served a minority, and the majority have not only failed to share in the income gains yielded by the model, they have suffered from reduced benefits, greater job instability and stress, and a diminution of expectations and sense of hope for the future.

  Edward S. Herman

  Jobs, Stress, Expectations

  11 Copy quote

• The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. In the present structure of society, this practice is inevitable. Whatever of social importance is done today, whether in politics, finance, manufacture, agriculture, charity, education, or other fields, must be done with the help of propaganda. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

  Edward Bernays

  Powerful, Practice, Agriculture

  36 Copy quote

• While few judges or prosecutors would be afraid to exercise their perfectly legitimate discretion in favour of an ordinary man, not to mention a minority group member, most would be terrified to exercise the same discretion for someone politically, financially or socially powerful.

  Conrad Black

  Powerful, Exercise, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Used to the conditions of a capitalistic environment, the average American takes it for granted that every year business makes something new and better accessible to him. Looking backward upon the years of his own life, he realizes that many implements that were totally unknown in the days of his youth and many others which at that time could be enjoyed only by a small minority are now standard equipment of almost every household.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Philosophy, Average, Years

  Ludwig Von Mises (1990). “Economic freedom and interventionism: an anthology of articles and essays”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Costs are incurred whenever any group is treated as lesser or the other, whether they are women, racial, or religious minorities, or the LGBT.

  Hillary Clinton

  Religious, Groups, Cost

  International Human Rights Day Address at Palais des Nations, delivered 6 December 2011, Geneva, Switzerland

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Acting alone, minorities can never achieve the majorities necessary for political change.

  Hillary Clinton

  Political, Acting, Majority

  International Human Rights Day Address at Palais des Nations, delivered 6 December 2011, Geneva, Switzerland

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the history of science it has often happened that the majority was wrong and refused to listen to a minority that later turned out to be right.

  Freeman Dyson

  Majority, Global Warming, History Of Science

  Freeman Dyson (2015). “Dreams of Earth and Sky”, p.94, New York Review of Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• And, even if Affirmative Action survives, it is also clear that these policies are not themselves sufficient to close the educational and employment gaps that plague U.S. minorities.

  Harry J. Holzer

  Educational, Gaps, Employment

  5 Copy quote

• Most important, [research on affirmative action] has completely failed to show that affirmative action ever closes the academic gap between minorities and whites. And failing in this, affirmative action also fails to help blacks achieve true equality with whites - the ultimate measure of which is parity in skills and individual competence. Without this underlying parity there can never be true equality in employment, income levels, rates of home ownership, educational achievement and the rest.

  Shelby Steele

  Educational, Home, Skills

  27 Copy quote

• The average man votes below himself; he votes with half a mind or a hundredth part of one. A man ought to vote with the whole of himself, as he worships or gets married. A man ought to vote with his head and heart, his soul and stomach, his eye for faces and his ear for music; also (when sufficiently provoked) with his hands and feet. If he has ever seen a fine sunset, the crimson color of it should creep into his vote. The question is not so much whether only a minority of the electorate votes. The point is that only a minority of the voter votes.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Sunset, Eye, Heart

  8 Copy quote

• All rights are individual. We do not get our rights because we belong to a group. Whether it's homosexuals, women, minorities, it leads us astray. You don't get your rights belonging to your group. A group can't force themselves on anybody else. So there should be no affirmative action for any group.

  Ron Paul

  Rights, Groups, Action

  5 Copy quote

• While the earnings of a minority are growing exponentially, so too is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those happy few. This imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation. Consequently, they reject the right of states, charged with vigilance for the common good, to exercise any form of control.

  Pope Francis

  Exercise, Growing, Politics

  Pope Francis (2014). “The Joy of the Gospel”, p.21, BookBaby

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• What is different in capitalist civilization has been two things. First, the process of meritocracy has been proclaimed as an official virtue instead of being merely a de facto reality. The culture has been different. And secondly, the percentage of the world's population for whom such ascent was possible has gone up. But even though it has grown up, meritocratic ascent remains very much the attribute of a minority.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Reality, Two, Civilization

  14 Copy quote

• We as a people seem to be losing all sense of respect for ourselves and our fellow men, with the result that in a thoroughly intolerant attitude we hesitate not a minute to secure an organized minority, or even a majority, to attempt by resolution or law to impose our will on a large body of people in matters where no moral wrong is involved and where liberty is curtailed.

  John J. Raskob

  Respect, Attitude, Men

  7 Copy quote

• We must set an example now and move environmentalism from being the philosophy of a passionate minority ... to a way of life that automatically integrates ecology into governmental policy and normal living standards.

  Leonardo DiCaprio

  Philosophy, Moving, Example

  "50 people who could save the planet" by John Vidal, David Adam, Jonathan Watts, Leo Hickman, Ian Sample, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2008.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• At first view it might seem not to square with the republican theory, to suppose either that a majority have not the right, or that a minority will have the force to subvert a government . . . . But theoretic reasoning in this, as in most other cases, must be qualified by the lessons of practice.

  James Madison

  Squares, Government, Views

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay (2015). “The Federalist Papers: A Collection of Essays Written in Favour of the New Constitution”, p.216, Coventry House Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society these irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense.

  Randolph Bourne

  War, Government, Groups

  Randolph Silliman Bourne (1965). “The world of Randolph Bourne: an anthology edited”

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race - the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions.

  Mark Twain

  Country, Eye, Heart

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.1338, GENERAL PRESS

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.

  Christopher Isherwood

  Real, Majority, Kind

  Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy, James P. White (1989). “Where Joy Resides: An Isherwood Reader”, Vintage

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The majority should not be punished and subjected to a licensing curfew because of the bad behavior of the minority.

  Tessa Jowell

  Majority, Behavior, Curfew

  128 Copy quote