Baltasar Gracian Quotes
What the multitude says is so, or soon will be.
See Otis Singletary for a similar modern view
Baltasar Gracian, 1601-1658, Spanish Jesuit & Writer, The Art of Worldly Wisdom, 1647
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Earl of Roscommon
An excellent example of this occurred in the first decades of the 21st century. At the beginning if the century, the majority of Americans were clearly opposed to the idea of same-sex / gay marriage. By 2008, the population was evenly split, for and against. By 2014 the majority of Americans were clearly in favor of same-sex marriage and it had been legalized in more than a dozen states.
1st Baron Lytton of Knebworth
This was much more the case in 1840 when this quotation was written. Since then, a much higher proportion of American society has become educated, and the cultures that American immigrants have come from had multiplied. Publications abounded and after radio and television there were more attacks on American majority positions. The major change came with radio call in talk shows, similar TV shows and then the Internet provided a painless way to publicly go against majority opinion. By the first decade of the 21st century, movements of majority rejectionists such as the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement were thriving and “futile contests” received much public attention and showed that there were others with the non-majority views who made it socially acceptable to be outside the norms of the majority.
Baltasar Gracián y Morales, S.J., better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragon). His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
