Minority of One

U.S. Senator Russ Feingold's resolution to censure the President sparked an incomplete memory of an old quotation which I tracked down and now believe originated with mid-nineteenth century Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian Thomas Carlyle:

Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men.

On Heroes And Hero Worship And The Heroic In History (1841).

This concept has appealed to some other notables, listed in probable order of publication:

Even if I am a minority of one, truth is still the truth.

Mohandas Gandhi

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

Will Durant

He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic. Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

George Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities — a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one.

Charlie Chaplin, in My Autobiography (1964)





Hang in there, Russ Feingold!