Quotes and Sayings about Minority

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds."
- Samuel Adams
(Related: People, Majority, Minority)

"What's a cult? It just means not enough people to make a minority."
- Robert Altman
(Related: People, Minority)

"The majority does not rule in America, but the minority shouldn't hijack it. And it's because we're afraid. They have isolated us and made us feel as though we're alone. We're not."
- Glenn Beck
(Related: America, Majority, Minority)

"The very purpose of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution is to protect minority rights against majority voters. Every court decision that strikes down discriminatory legislation, including past Supreme Court decisions, affirming the fundamental rights to marry the person you love, overrules a majority decision."
- David Boies
(Related: Love, Decision, Purpose, Constitution, Court, Decisions, Rights, Legislation, Majority, Minority, Past)

"The review process was conducted in an extremely bipartisan manner. Minority members of the Judiciary Committee were responsible for the invitation of 1/3 of the witnesses who appeared."
- Jo Bonner
(Related: Committee, Minority)

"It is sufficient to say, what everybody knows to be true, that the Irish population is Catholic, and that the Protestants, whether of the Episcopalian or Presbyterian Church, or of both united, are a small minority of the Irish people."
- John Bright
(Related: People, Church, Irish, Minority, Population, United)

"When you use the term minority or minorities in reference to people, you're telling them that they're less than somebody else."
- Gwendolyn Brooks
(Related: People, Minority)

"Don't let anyone call you a minority if you're black or Hispanic or belong to some other ethnic group. You're not less than anybody else."
- Gwendolyn Brooks
(Related: Minority)

"Never be afraid to stand with the minority when the minority is right, for the minority which is right will one day be the majority."
- William Jennings Bryan
(Related: Day, Majority, Minority, Right, Will)

"In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority."
- Edmund Burke
(Related: Democracy, Majority, Minority)

"That's what the Senate is about. It's the last bastion of minority rights, where a minority can be heard, where a minority can stand on its feet, one individual if necessary, and speak until he falls into the dust."
- Robert Byrd
(Related: Feet, Rights, Minority, Senate)

"I voted for the Defense of Marriage Act but I do not believe we should institutionalize a form of discrimination against any minority by amending the Constitution."
- Ben Nighthorse Campbell
(Related: Marriage, Act, Constitution, Defense, Discrimination, Minority)

"Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one."
- Thomas Carlyle
(Related: Minority, Opinion)

"In his years in Washington, Senator Kerry has been one vote of a hundred in the United States Senate - and fortunately on matters of national security he was very often in the minority."
- Dick Cheney
(Related: Minority, National security, Senate, states, United, Vote, Washington, Years)

"If you're black in this country, if you're a woman in this country, if you are any minority in this country at all, what could possibly possess you to vote Republican?"
- Cher
(Related: Country, Minority, Republican, Vote, Woman)

"The intelligent minority of this world will mark 1 January 2001 as the real beginning of the 21st century and the Third Millennium."
- Arthur C. Clarke
(Related: Beginning, Minority, Will, World)

"When you belong to a minority, you have to be better in order to have the right to be equal."
- Christiane Collage
(Related: Minority, Order, Right)

"Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it."
- John Corigliano
(Related: Love, Music, People, Culture, Jazz, Minority, Popular)

"If there is a nuclear tactic being used here, I submit it is the use of that obstruction where a willful minority blocks a bipartisan majority from voting on the President's judicial nominees."
- John Cornyn
(Related: Being, Majority, Minority, President, Voting)

"The enemy is not just terrorism. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism, by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion, and distorts both."
- John Cornyn
(Related: Politics, Religion, Islam, Enemy, Extreme, Intolerance, Minority, Terrorism, Tradition)

"The power of the sword, say the minority... is in the hands of Congress."
- Tench Coxe
(Related: Power, Congress, Minority)

"The meaning of this observation is unclear, but it raises the unfortunate possibility of ambiguous triplets; that is, triplets which may code more than one amino acid. However one would certainly expect such triplets to be in a minority."
- Francis Crick
(Related: Possibility, May, Meaning, Minority, Observation)

"When a violent minority that crosses color lines comes to believe that killing those you know or do not know is a reasonable solution to problems, we are in need of another vision."
- Stanley Crouch
(Related: Vision, Killing, Minority, Problems, Solution)

"Americans of our own time - minority and majority Americans alike - need the continued guidance that the Voting Rights Act provides. We have come a long way, but more needs to be done."
- Elijah Cummings
(Related: Time, Act, Americans, Rights, Guidance, Majority, Minority, Needs, Voting)

"In the same vein as these events, National Minority Health Month also serves as a reminder of how much work needs to be done to eliminate health and healthcare inequities."
- Elijah Cummings
(Related: Health, Work, Events, Healthcare, Minority, Needs)

"When you're in the minority, it doesn't matter what you're agenda is, you're not going to have the degree of freedom that you have as a member of the majority."
- Tom Daschle
(Related: Freedom, Majority, Minority)

"We know we're up against the wall. We know how difficult a challenge it is, being in the minority."
- Tom Daschle
(Related: Being, Challenge, Minority)

"Well, it seems to me Lincoln, I suppose, is kind of a model of a particular sort of presidency, a presidency that first of all is elected by a minority of the votes."
- David Herbert Donald
(Related: First, Minority, Presidency)

"The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority."
- Will Durant
(Related: Acting, Machine, Majority, Minority, United)

"Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent."
- Will Durant
(Related: Truth, Custom, Minority)

"The Jews are the living embodiment of the minority, the constant reminder of what duties societies owe their minorities, whoever they might be."
- Abba Eban
(Related: Living, Minority)

"In the first 50 years of the filibuster, it was used only 35 times. But the last Congress alone had 112 cloture motions filed, plus threats of more. This is the tyranny of the minority."
- Peter Fenn
(Related: Congress, First, Minority, Tyranny, Years)

"Both the historian and the novelist view history as the struggle of a tiny minority, able and determined to make judgments, which is up against a vast and densely packed majority of the blind, who are led by their instincts and unable to think for themselves."
- Lion Feuchtwanger
(Related: History, Blind, Majority, Minority, Struggle)

"I love it now that a large minority of people who are handicapped prefer to call themselves crippled. This is all part of the game, like queer theory."
- Leslie Fiedler
(Related: Love, People, Minority, Now, Theory)

"I'm used to being in the minority. I'm a left-handed gay Jew. I've never felt, automatically, a member of any majority."
- Barney Frank
(Related: Being, Gay, Majority, Minority)

"Given that Mr. Kerry is clearly exaggerating what happened to minority voters in the 2000 election in Florida, maybe we should wait for him to provide evidence of what he is alleging in 2004."
- John Fund
(Related: Minority)

"Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth."
- Mohandas Gandhi
(Related: Truth, Minority)

"The argument that somehow we've got to get rid of minority scholarships so that we can have a free and fair America implies that we have a colorblind society where minorities are equal in their pursuit of funds to go to school."
- William H. Gray
(Related: Society, America, Argument, Minority, Pursuit, School)

"I think the real problem for American religion are those minority of fundamentalists who try to identify political policies with religion."
- Andrew Greeley
(Related: Religion, American, Minority)

"If you want to be a government in a minority Parliament, you have to work with other people."
- Stephen Harper
(Related: Government, Work, People, Minority, Parliament, Want)

"I love the ACLU and I'm concerned now, especially when it comes to our rights, with current politics and the religious community and the Conservative majority or minority - I don't know who they are."
- Debbie Harry
(Related: Love, Politics, Community, Conservative, Rights, Majority, Minority, Now, Religious)

"Thus, the forces and value systems that are most threatened by this shift are becoming the most coherent and are rising to the top as minority or plurality powers. But they do not represent either the shift, the change, or the future."
- Paul Hawken
(Related: Change, Future, Minority, Value)

"Our father died when we were very young, so our mother raised six kids. We saw the world filtered through her eyes, being a minority woman raising six kids."
- Gilbert Hernandez
(Related: Mother, Father, Being, Eyes, Kids, Minority, Woman, World)

"A dissenting minority feels free only when it can impose its will on the majority: what it abominates most is the dissent of the majority."
- Eric Hoffer
(Related: Dissent, Majority, Minority, Will)

"The Constitution gives the president the power to appoint, upon the advice and consent of a majority of the Senate, and it plainly does not give a minority of senators any right to interfere with that process."
- John Jay Hooker
(Related: Power, Advice, Constitution, Majority, Minority, President, Right, Senate, Senators)

"The majority is always wrong; the minority is rarely right."
- Henrik Ibsen
(Related: Majority, Minority, Right, Wrong)

"A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong."
- Henrik Ibsen
(Related: Majority, May, Minority, Right, Wrong)

"I know that Bush, for political reasons, is going to nominate a minority, a Hispanic man or someone where it will be harder for people on the progressive side to oppose and split some of the traditionally progressive or democratic constituents."
- Patricia Ireland
(Related: People, Man, Minority, Will)

"In politics, an organized minority is a political majority."
- Jesse Jackson
(Related: Politics, Majority, Minority)

"All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression."
- Thomas Jefferson
(Related: Rights, Law, Majority, Mind, Minority, Oppression, Will)

"When I go in to see people - and I sell an occasional ad now - I never say, 'Help me because I am black' or 'Help me because I am a minority.' I always talk about what we can do for them."
- John H. Johnson
(Related: People, Minority, Now, Talk)

"The restriction of religion to private life therefore does not necessarily threaten the vital interests of the majority religion, if there is one, and it protects minority religions from tyranny of the majority."
- Phillip E. Johnson
(Related: Life, Religion, Majority, Minority, Tyranny)

"There is no obstacle in the path of young people who are poor or members of minority groups that hard work and preparation cannot cure."
- Barbara Jordan
(Related: Work, People, Cure, Hard work, Minority, Poor, Preparation)

"People who are interested in the arts and theater are such a minority."
- Carol Kane
(Related: People, Minority, Theater)

"Strong efforts have been made in Ohio to curb the authoritarianism of our Secretary of State, Kenneth Blackwell, as he has purged people from lists in our State in particular precincts where voters are heavily minority."
- Marcy Kaptur
(Related: People, Minority, State)

"Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better."
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Related: Minority, World)

"In recurring episodes over the next couple of decades, the minority view gradually won. A profusion of factors differentiates each case from the others, including naked partisanship on both sides, but the trend has been clear."
- Michael Kinsley
(Related: Minority)

"The law is an adroit mixture of customs that are beneficial to society, and could be followed even if no law existed, and others that are of advantage to a ruling minority, but harmful to the masses of men, and can be enforced on them only by terror."
- Peter Kropotkin
(Related: Men, Society, Law, Minority, Terror)

"Following the Second World War, we are a country of one ethnicity. After the moving of the borders, after the tragedy of the Holocaust and the murder of Polish Jews, we don't have large minority groups."
- Aleksander Kwasniewski
(Related: War, Country, Minority, Murder, Tragedy, World, World war)

"I am now completing research supported by NSF and NEH that is mapping changes in the English language through all of North America, for both mainstream and minority communities."
- William Labov
(Related: America, English, Language, Minority, Now, Research)

"Why, so soon as French Canadians, who are in a minority in this House and in the country, were to organise as a political party, they would compel the majority to organise as a political party, and the result must be disastrous to themselves."
- Wilfrid Laurier
(Related: Country, Majority, Minority, Party, Result)

"What we call a democratic society might be defined for certain purposes as one in which the majority is always prepared to put down a revolutionary minority."
- Walter Lippmann
(Related: Society, Majority, Minority)

"Under the process of ongoing globalization, advantages are, in the main, created for a minority of countries and development centres as well as powerful transnational companies."
- Tran Duc Luong
(Related: Development, Countries, Globalization, Minority)

"In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority."
- James Madison
(Related: Danger, Rights, Majority, May, Minority, Respect)

"What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil."
- Norman Mailer
(Related: Evil, Minority)

"South Africa was to evolve into the most pernicious example of the criminal practise of colonial and white minority domination."
- Thabo Mbeki
(Related: Example, Minority)

"Your political system is actually too democratic. The fact that Americans vote on every bill and proposition can prolong bigotry indefinitely, especially where it is aimed at minority groups."
- George Michael
(Related: Americans, Bigotry, Fact, Minority, Vote)

"The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking."
- A. A. Milne
(Related: First, Majority, Mind, Minority, Thinking)

"I am involved in a freedom ride protesting the loss of the minority rights belonging to the few remaining earthbound stars. All we demanded was our right to twinkle."
- Marilyn Monroe
(Related: Freedom, Rights, Loss, Minority, Stars)

"Every religious group, while perhaps a majority somewhere, is also inevitably a minority somewhere else. Thus, religious organizations should and do show tolerance toward members of other religious denominations."
- Russell M. Nelson
(Related: Majority, Minority, Religious, Tolerance)

"Many are called but few are chosen. There are sayings of Christ which suggest that the Church he came to establish will always be a minority affair."
- Edward Norman
(Related: Church, Christ, Minority, sayings, Will)

"Since governmental quotas expand bureaucratic power, provoke a backlash and are unfair to individuals, we need to find a better way to increase minority opportunities."
- Marvin Olasky
(Related: Power, Minority)

"To date, nearly 100,000 Hispanics have died with AIDS. Since Hispanics are the fastest growing minority group in the United States, our challenge is even greater."
- Solomon Ortiz
(Related: Challenge, Minority, states, United)

"And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed."
- Lee Harvey Oswald
(Related: Democracy, Minority, Right)

"Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority."
- Henri Poincare
(Related: Infinite, Invention, Minority)

"The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Earth, Rights, Minority)

"Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual)."
- Ayn Rand
(Related: Earth, Rights, Majority, Minority, Oppression, Public, Vote)

"Minority views expressed in films simply don't sell tickets."
- Karel Reisz
(Related: Minority)

"There were sometimes from forty to sixty English machines, but unfortunately the Germans were often in the minority. With them quality was more important than quantity."
- Manfred von Richthofen
(Related: Quality, English, Machines, Minority, Quantity)

"As far as I know, only a small minority of mathematicians, even of those with Platonist views, accept the idea that there may be mathematical facts which are true but unknowable."
- Abraham Robinson
(Related: Idea, Facts, Mathematicians, May, Minority)

"In the end, a small section of the crowd, maybe 2,000 to 3,000, turned against me. And that was it. Inside the club they know your best intentions, but the minority shout louder than the rest."
- Bryan Robson
(Related: End, Intentions, Minority, Rest)

"It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau
(Related: Action, Majority, Minority, United)

"A minority group has "arrived" only when it has the right to produce some fools and scoundrels without the entire group paying for it."
- Carl T. Rowan
(Related: Fools, Minority, Right)

"We raised almost 2 million dollars at the last golf tournament that can be used for minority scholarships and Junior Golf programs. The payoff for the work we do is so much more valuable than the work we actually do for it."
- Darius Rucker
(Related: Work, Golf, Minority)

"Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art. Only on the margins does growth occur."
- Joanna Russ
(Related: Art, Growth, Minority)

"The Sixth Sense is not a good white film. Insomnia is not a good white film. They're just good films. So why we can't we have good films that happen to have black people, or Asian, or Latino, or any other minority group in them?"
- Eriq La Salle
(Related: People, Film, Minority, Sense)

"At the very top state institutions, like UCLA, Berkeley and the University of Texas, however, the trend of downward minority enrollment remains persistent and discouraging."
- Adam Schiff
(Related: Minority, State, University)

"To reduce this claim of slavery to an absurdity, it is only necessary to add that there are only two states in which slaves are a majority, and not one in which the slaveholders are not a very disproportionate minority."
- William H. Seward
(Related: Absurdity, Majority, Minority, Slavery, states)

"I bring other constituencies - I also have ties to minority communities. And obviously, to the world of world-class research universities. So I can bring some constituencies that I'm used to working with."
- Donna Shalala
(Related: Minority, Research, World)

"As for the future, we are equally determined to explore all possibilities of getting rid, once and for all, of the huge Arab minority which originally threatened us."
- Moshe Sharett
(Related: Future, Minority, Possibilities)

"The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong."
- George Bernard Shaw
(Related: Majority, Minority, Right, Wrong)

"As a gay Jewish white South African, I belong to quite a lot of minority groups. You constantly have to question who you are, what you are and whether you have the courage to be who you are."
- Antony Sher
(Related: Courage, African, Gay, Minority, Question)

"We've got to help small businesses because they are the backbone of our economy. We've got to increase opportunities for everyone and we can do that by helping women and minority-owned businesses."
- Rob Simmons
(Related: Women, Economy, Help, Minority)

"For minority actors, developing our own projects has to be the eventual path. We have a lot of stories to tell and a really unique voice. But none of that is going to be heard as long as we're just the hired hands, acting."
- Jimmy Smits
(Related: Acting, Actors, Minority, Projects, Voice)

"The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority."
- Ralph W. Sockman
(Related: Courage, Majority, Minority, Tolerance)

"And I think that we in America need to understand that many schools need improvement, and particularly with respect to how they're serving minority children."
- Margaret Spellings
(Related: America, Children, Improvement, Minority, Respect, Schools)

"Clearly no one knows what leadership has gone undiscovered in women of all races, and in black and other minority men."
- Gloria Steinem
(Related: Leadership, Men, Women, Minority)

"Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority."
- Harlan Stone
(Related: Democracy, Guidance, Minority)

"A virulent, aggressive minority has decided that Americans don't know themselves what it is they should see, and need to be protected by people who are wiser than they are, even if they are only a tiny sliver of the population."
- Jock Sturges
(Related: People, Americans, Minority, Population)

"When you put a tiny and despised minority up for a popular vote, the minority usually loses."
- Andrew Sullivan
(Related: Minority, Popular, Vote)

"Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority."
- Antonio Tabucchi
(Related: War, Killing, Minority, World, World war, Years)

"The white people of the South are the greatest minority in this nation. They deserve consideration and understanding instead of the persecution of twisted propaganda."
- Strom Thurmond
(Related: People, Consideration, Minority, Nation, Persecution, Propaganda, Understanding)

"In fact, there are more homeowners today than ever before in the history of our Nation and more minority homeowners than ever before in the history of our Nation."
- Todd Tiahrt
(Related: History, Fact, Minority, Nation, Today)

"It is admitted by everybody that rights and privileges enjoyed by the Roman Catholic minority in Manitoba down to 1890, were taken away by legislation of 1890."
- Charles Tupper
(Related: Rights, Legislation, Minority)

"That text-books be permitted in Catholic schools such as will not offend the religious views of the minority, and which from an educational standpoint shall be satisfactory to the advisory board."
- Charles Tupper
(Related: Minority, Religious, Schools, Will)

"I'm not a member of a minority but I can empathize with what's going on."
- Matthew Vaughn
(Related: Minority)

"People are not fundamentally bad. It only takes the smallest of correctives to take care of that tiny minority that wants to disrupt the community."
- Jimmy Wales
(Related: People, Care, Community, Minority)

"We cannot ignore the disparity in resources that continue to plague many of our school systems, especially those serving predominantly inner-city minority and impoverished children."
- Diane Watson
(Related: Children, Minority, School)

"Historically, the judicial branch has often been the sole protector of the rights of minority groups against the will of the popular majority."
- Diane Watson
(Related: Rights, Majority, Minority, Popular, Will)

"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."
- James D. Watson
(Related: Evolution, Fact, Minority, Principles, Religious, Theory, Today)

"The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists."
- Vivienne Westwood
(Related: People, Artists, Minority, Support)

"The minority yields to the majority!"
- Deng Xiaoping
(Related: Minority)