Minorities Quotes - Page 8

One of the most important of all the causes of great inequality of income is the inheritance of a great fortune by a small minority.

If a country doesn't recognize minority rights and human rights, including women's rights, you will not have the kind of stability and prosperity that is possible.

I grew up as a discriminated minority in a dictatorship, so obviously the issue of human rights is a matter of concern for me.

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

I feel Irish-Americans are the forgotten minority group. Nobody else is making films about them.

The white establishment is now the minority.

The problem of insufficient security was, until quite recently, a matter of a minority; now it is becoming very quickly a majority matter. That is a major change.

The problem of sexual minorities in Russia has been deliberately made controversial in Russia. There is no such problem in Russia.

Sometimes I just like the feeling of being a minority and seeing how far you can push yourself in extreme circumstances.

Take away grievances from some people and you remove their reasons for living; most of us are nourished by hope, but a considerable minority get psychic nutrition from their resentments, and would waste away purposelessly without them.

Today's Democrats are little more than a collection of narrow interest groups-unions, tort lawyers, minorities headed by an ossified leadership. They are clever, tenacious and increasingly nasty in defending their perks, as establishments typically are.

A Confucian or Jewish love of learning would gain minorities far more than any affirmative action laws we might pass.

A fatal defect in majority rule is that by its very nature it abolishes itself. Majority rule must inevitably become minority rule: the majority is too big to handle itself; it organizes itself into committees ... which in their turn resolve themselves into a committee of one.

There are certain standards, like the protection of minorities and the improvement in their lives that have to be improved now.

A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up the state's segregation laws was democratically elected?

What may be possible for a minority of humankind, albeit at great cost, simply cannot work for the humankind. Our kind of progress depends on lacerating the Earth,on gouging out its riches, on stripping is life-sustaining skin of soil and forest

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one. At one time it had been a sign of madness to believe that the Earth goes round the Sun; today, to believe the past is inalterable. He might be alone in holding that belief, and if alone, then a lunatic. But the thought of being a lunatic did not greatly trouble him; the horror was that he might also be wrong.

If an action must be taken that will benefit the majority at the cost of the minority, is it morally indefensible? If an action taken for the benefit of a majority occurs at the expense of a minority, is it moral action?

In any society freedom of thought will probably be of direct significance for a small minority. But this does not mean that anyone is competent, or ought to have power, to select those to whom this freedom is to be reserved.

A minority is only thought of as a minority when it constitutes some kind of threat to the majority, real or imaginary. And no threat is ever quite imaginary.

When you're fighting for economic and social justice, you're always fighting for the minority.

We must settle this question now -- whether in a free government the minority have the right to break it up whenever they choose. If we fail, it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.

The hard truth is that what may be acceptable in elite culture may not be acceptable in mass culture, that tastes which pose only innocent ethical issues as the property of a minority become corrupting when they become more established. Taste is context, and the context has changed.

All rights are individual. We do not get our rights because we belong to a group. Whether it's homosexuals, women, minorities, it leads us astray. You don't get your rights belonging to your group. A group can't force themselves on anybody else. So there should be no affirmative action for any group.

All novels are about certain minorities: the individual is a minority.