Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

The human race is made up of sheep. It is governed by minorities, seldom or never by majorities. It suppresses its feelings and its beliefs and follows the handful that makes the most noise. Sometimes the noisy handful is right, sometimes wrong; but no matter, the crowd follows it.

History has never been dominated by majorities, but only by dedicated minorities who stand unconditionally on their faith.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority.

Majorities, of course, start with minorities.

The purpose of the minority is to become the majority.

There is a qualitative difference between being a minority and being a majority. Majorities are stronger under psychological pressure because numbers count. But only if they are aware of it.

Minorities…are almost always in the right.

The power and influence of public opinion has increased, and the driving force of the nosiest elements of public opinion tends in excited times to consist, not of majorities, but of minorities.

Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule.

Power is being able to affect the hegemony of existing systems.

Nothing appears more surprising ... than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.

We’ve gone down the road of multiculturalism, which ostensibly says that all minorities have equal status to the majority, The result has been that we have handed minorities a stick with which to beat the majority.

A privilege accruing to the majority ceases to be such.

No usurped power can stand against the artillery of opinion.

You want at least 5% of the population being serious. That five, 6% of the population carries the rest of the people. You've heard that old axiom: 5% of the people pull the wagon; 95% are in it.

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.

the society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with dependence on the "objective order of things" (on economic laws, the market etc.).

It's very tough to get yourself around the idea that there could be a mechanism being used or abused to restrict and alter the society in which we live.

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason.

In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.

A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.

If we have power to degrade an entire society, then we also have the power to uplift it.

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

All progress comes from the creative minority.

The thing we have to fear in this country, to my way of thinking, is the influence of the organized minorities, because somehow or other the great majority does not seem to organize. They seem to feel that they are going to be effective because of their own strength, but they give no expression of it.