Minority Quotes
48 quotes
"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)."
"When you're the only sane person, you look like the only insane person."
"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."
"When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol."
"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."
"An ethnic minority can live in peace with an ethnic majority as long as the majority does not use its preponderance to turn the institutions of the state into an instrument of ethnic favoritism or ethnic justice."
Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience
"I never feel unsafe except for when the majority is on my side."
"For any marginalized group to change the story that society tells about them takes courage and perseverance."
"Now is not the time for bigots and racists. No time for sexists and homophobes. Now, more than ever, is the time for ARTISTS. It’s time for us to rise above and to create. To show humanity. To spread hope. We must prevent society from destroying itself, from losing its way. Now is the time for love."
"Although we may face untold numbers that by their sheer mass appear to render us as little more than a speck in the face of them, a single person standing with God amidst any mass will always be an indomitable majority."
"Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles."
"We would not be ashamed of doing some of the things we do in private, if the number of sane human beings who do them in public were large enough."
"If we had to earn our age by thinking for ourselves at least once a year, only a handful of people would reach adulthood."
"Try being an indie author, a minority author, a woman, and a person with health issues in the world of traditional - that's where you are clearly 'different' and marginalized. I am all of that, yet I am still here and smiling. Life is good!"
"You don’t need a huge number of people with little passions to get a good job done. You rather need few people with huge passion."
Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
"Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art. Only on the margins does growth occur."
"History honors the unique minority the majority cannot forget."
Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
"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."
"A single man is minority, a leader is the majority."
"As for the majority, it is not so much race as it is political affiliation that really divides it today. What was once an issue of physical difference is now one of intellectual difference. Men have yet to master disagreeing without flashing all their frustrations that come with it; the conservative will throw half-truths while the liberal will throw insults. Combine these and what do you get? A dishonest mockery of a country."
"If you can tag every Pakistani men as terrorists, you can definitely tag every Indian men as rapists... That's how the minority make an identity for the nation."
"True leaders do not make choices with reference to the opinion of the majority. They make choices based on the opinion of the truth and the truth can come from either the majority or the minority!"
"What an ironic tragedy that an affluent, “Christian” minority in the world continues to hoard its wealth while hundreds of millions of people hover on the edge of starvation!"
Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity
"We must believe we are capable of transcending evil, of not needing to hide in the darkness or surrender to our basest fears."
"Then I told him, ‘Injustice, Poverty and Discrimination is faced by a lot of Indians, and also majority, the fact is that if you “Minority” stop thinking yourself as a part of “Minority” and start thinking as the part of India, and proceed together for it’s good, then only “Minority” and majority would progress altogether."
"Misguided good men are more dangerous than honest bad men. It is because they are seen as good that, in and by good conscience, the mob will always, stubbornly back them without question."
"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?"
"Those who benefit from unearned privilege are too often quick to discount those who don't."
"Bigotry hurts the economy, so the next time you want to blame minorities for your problems, first take a look in the mirror."
"Throughout history, only a small number of people have done the serious thinking for everybody."
"Denying the facts is what enables people to hate and to persecute marginalized and threatened minority groups. Labeling the advocacy, educational and informational initiatives of these persecuted minority groups dismissively as 'propaganda for the gay agenda' undermines, belittles and trivializes the cause of those whose right to exist is under threat."
"In each generation, there is this certain wisdom of the ages that gets reburied in the fleeting drivels of modernity; then, like a diamond in the rough, it is yet again unearthed by a very small minority who not only restores it, but also polishes it and presents it as something new, something highly valuable and refreshing as understood by the current."
"Never until the wounded came back from Bunker Hill had I realized the lengths of which a determined minority will go in order to achieve its ends. For the first time I understood one of the fundamentals of warfare: that armies cannot be raised by nations or parties unless the rage of the people is first kindled by lies and name-calling."
"Don’t get me wrong. Government Contracting is difficult, but the help you give the government makes our country strong."
"He's basically a good man. But he doesn't know me. Any more than he knew that girl that looked after your mother. He can't know me, not the way I know him. Maybe some of these Hawaiians can, or the Indians on the reservation. They've seen their fathers humiliated. Their mothers desecrated. But your grandfather will never know what that feels like."
Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
"An India that denies itself to some of us could end up being denied to all of us. This would be a second Partition: and a partition in the Indian soul would be as bad as a partition in the Indian soil. For my sons, the only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts. An India neither Hindu nor Muslim, but both. That is the only India that will allow them to continue to call themselves Indians."
"minorityhood is a state of mind, Mr. Diggs. It is a sense of powerlessness, of being out of the mainstream, of being here on sufferance. I refuse to let others define me that way. I tell my fellow Muslims: No one can make you a minority without your consent."
"The truth does not need a number of supporters for authenticity. One person among the lot can be the only truthful out of the ten; 11 people out of 12 may be on the truthful side. However, the truth is the truth irrespective of how many people like to embrace it!"
"The existence of a majority logically implies a corresponding minority."
"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)"
"For the minority, what else is democracy than dictatorship?"
"On the sound of handcuffs--"For me it's the sound of all light and hope crashing down on a minority."
"Seniority has nothing to do with intellectuality, your individuality wins the majority or minority, simply because you maintained the status quo of your peculiarity."
"Minority conservatives hold a special place of gutter contempt in the minds of unhinged liberals, who can never accept the radical concept of a person of color rejecting identity politics."
"And the further they go, the more they'll remember, they can take it from me."
Rohinton Mistry, Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag
"A majority opinion does not represent the ultimate decision because such a view is not unanimous and lacks general will."
"You can be with the 'truth' or you can cheat yourself by believing the big lie in front of you is the 'truth'. Those who are with the 'truth' are a minority, whom you may call Utopians."
"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."