Minorities Quotes - Page 6

• The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.

  Ralph Washington Sockman

  Life, Courage, Bullying

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• I read something in the paper that really confused me the other day. It said that 80 percent of the people in New York are minorities. Shouldn't you not call them minorities when they get to be 80 percent of the population? That's a very white attitude, don't you think? I mean, you could take a white guy to Africa and he'd be like 'Look at all the minorities around here! I'm the only majority.'

  Louis C. K.

  New York, Attitude, Confused

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• Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely. 'Tis pedantry to estimate nations by the census, or by square miles of land, or other than by their importance to the mind of the time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Country, Land, Squares

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.1081, Library of America

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• A high-speed connection is no more an essential civil right than 3G cell phone service or a Netflix account. Increasing competition and restoring academic excellence in abysmal public schools is far more of an imperative to minority children than handing them iPads.

  Michelle Malkin

  Children, School, Phones

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• If the pendulum swings, it may swing to a combination of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and, thus, to a period of minority government or coalition, in some form.

  Vince Cable

  Government, Swings, May

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• Minorities have never been given their rights. They have always had to wage a political and legal battle to win them.

  Gloria Allred

  Winning, Rights, Political

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• 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

  People, Tiny, Population

  Interview with David Steinberg, www.nearbycafe.com. May 25, 1994.

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• The nations which have put mankind and posterity most in their debt have been small states Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.

  Bill Vaughan

  Israel, Florence, Debt

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• I have spent a great deal of my life being part of minorities. Some of the people I admire the most in the world have had the courage to defend, against wind and tide, minority viewpoints in those frightening times when any disagreement with universal conformity is identified as treason.

  Antonio Munoz Molina

  Wind, People, Tides

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• The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

  Thomas Sowell

  Country, Attitude, Long

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• We cannot discuss the state of our minorities until we first have some sense of what we are, who we are, what our goals are, and what we take life to be. The question is not what we can do now for the hypothetical Mexican, the hypothetical Negro. The question is what we really want out of life, for ourselves, what we think is real.

  James A. Baldwin

  Life, Real, Thinking

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• Governments exist to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection: they have many friends and few enemies.

  Wendell Phillips

  Rights, Government, Political

  Wendell Phillips (1864). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.341

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• 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

  Majority, Degrees, Agendas

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• The two pioneering forces of modern sensibility are Jewish moral seriousness and homosexual aestheticism and irony.

  Susan Sontag

  Two, Moral, Irony

  Susan Sontag (1983). “A Susan Sontag reader”, Vintage

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• Thought that is silenced is always rebellious. Majorities, of course, are often mistaken. This is why the silencing of minorities is necessarily dangerous. Criticism and dissent are the indispensable antidote to major delusions.

  Alan Barth

  Atheism, Liberty, Criticism

  "The Loyalty of Free Men". Book by Alan Barth, 1951.

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• In politics, an organized minority is a political majority.

  Jesse Jackson

  Freedom, Political, Democracy

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• It is always the minorities that hold the key of progress.

  Raymond B. Fosdick

  Keys, Progress

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• In the gun game, we are the most hunted. The river of blood that washes the streets of our nation flows mostly from the bodies of our black children.

  Harry Belafonte

  Children, Gun, Blood

  Harry Belafonte’s Speech Accepting NAACP Spingarn Medal, www.democracynow.org. February 18, 2013.

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• I bring quadruple diversity to the Senate: I'm a woman; I'll be the first Asian woman ever to be elected to the U.S. Senate; I am an immigrant; I am a Buddhist. When I said this at one of my gatherings, they said, 'Yes, but are you gay?' and I said, 'Nobody's perfect.'

  Mazie Hirono

  Buddhist, Gay, Government

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• 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

  Freedom, Rights, Political

  Ayn Rand (1964). “The Virtue of Selfishness”, p.100, Penguin

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• Democracy cannot survive without the guidance of a creative minority.

  Harlan F. Stone

  Creative, Democracy, Guidance

  "Harlan Fiske Stone, Pillar of the Law" by Alpheus Thomas Mason, (p. 95), 1956.

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• Our world loses out when the leadership doesn't reflect the led - when a minority makes decisions for the majority.

  Amy Richards

  Our World, Decision, Majority

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• My non-violence bids me dedicate myself to the service of the minorities.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Violence, Non Violence

  Mahatma Gandhi (1967). “The Mind of Mahatma Gandhi”, p.339, Rajpal & Sons

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• It is our great collective misfortune that the scientific community made its decisive diagnosis of the climate threat at the precise moment when an elite minority was enjoying more unfettered political, cultural, and intellectual power than at any point since the 1920s.

  Naomi Klein

  Science, Community, Political

  Naomi Klein (2014). “This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. The Climate”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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• And that is my definition of democracy, the right to be in a minority and not be suppressed

  Lee Harvey Oswald

  Democracy, Definitions

  Diane Holloway, Lee Harvey Oswald, Bob Cheney (2008). “Autobiography of Lee Harvey Oswald: My Life in My Words”, p.194, iUniverse

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