When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule the majority are wrong.
--
Speech in Cleveland, Ohio.(Sept. 11, 1918) Eugene V. Debs Speaks, ed. Jean Y. Tussey (1970)Eugene V. Debs
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If my history lesson has done nothing else, it should have reminded you that, during any given period in the evolving history of physics, the prevailing, main line, climate of opinion was likely as not to be wrong, as seen in the light of later developments. And yet, in those earlier times, with relatively few individuals involved, change did occur, but slowly... What is fundamentally different in the present day situation in high energy physics is that large numbers of workers are involved, with corresponding pressures to conformity and resistance to any deflection in direction of the main stream, and that the time scale of one scientific generation is much too long for the rapid pace of experimental discovery. I also have a secret fear that new generations may not necessarily have the opportunity to become familiar with dissident ideas.
Julian Schwinger
Liberalism is a doctrine about what the law ought to be, democracy a doctrine about the manner of determining the law. Liberalism regards it as desirable that only what the majority accepts should in fact be law, but it does not believe that this is therefore necessarily good law. Its aim, indeed, is to persuade the majority to observe certain principles. It accepts majority rule as a method of deciding, but not as an authority for what the decision ought to be. To the doctrinaire democrat the fact that the majority wants something is sufficient ground for regarding it as good; for him the will of the majority determines not only what is law but what is good law.
Friedrich Hayek
It is the vague modern who is not at all certain what is right who is most certain that Dante was wrong. The serious opponent of the Latin Church in history, even in the act of showing that it produced great infamies, must know that it produced great saints. It is the hard-headed stockbroker, who knows no history and believes no religion, who is, nevertheless, perfectly convinced that all these priests are knaves.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Fellow citizens, we have been called to leadership in a period of consequence. We have entered a great ideological conflict we did nothing to invite. We see great changes in science and commerce that will influence all our lives. And sometimes it can seem that history is turning in a wide arc, toward an unknown shore. Yet the destination of history is determined by human action, and every great movement of history comes to a point of choosing.
George W. Bush
Debs, Eugene V.
Debussy, Claude
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