We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection
Samuel AdamsRead
It does not take a majority to prevail... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Change often begins with a passionate minority rather than the majority. A small, determined group can inspire significant societal shifts.
This quote by Samuel Adams emphasizes the power and effectiveness of a devoted minority in bringing about change and inspiring others. It suggests that it is not always the majority that drives progress, but rather a small, motivated group that can ignite ideas of freedom and instigate thoughts that encourage others to pursue change.
Themes
MinorityFreedomChangeInspirationActivism
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about grassroots movements and their impact.
More from Samuel Adams
All quotes →Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.
Samuel AdamsRead
If taxes are laid upon us in any shape without our having a legal representation where they are laid, are we not reduced from the character of free subjects to the miserable state of tributary slaves? We claim British rights not by charter only! We are born to them.
Samuel AdamsRead
Let no man thirst for good beer.
Samuel AdamsRead
He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man.
Samuel AdamsRead
We boast of our freedom, and we have your example for it. We talk the language we have always heard you speak.
Samuel AdamsRead
Similar quotes
Since the death instinct exists in the heart of everything that lives, since we suffer from trying to repress it, since everything that lives longs for rest, let us unfasten the ties that bind us to life, let us cultivate our death wish, let us develop it, water it like a plant, let it grow unhindered. Suffering and fear are born from the repression of the death wish.
Eugene IonescoRead
Disgust is often more deeply buried than envy and anger, but it compounds and intensifies the other negative emotions.
Martha NussbaumRead
I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of ‘thinking’ and ‘enjoying’ what they call ‘living’, I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.
Jack KerouacRead
A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God
Martin LutherRead
There is only one solitude, and it is vast, heavy, difficult to bear, and almost everyone has hours when he would gladly exchange it for any kind of sociability, however trivial or cheap, for the tiniest outward agreement with the first person who comes along.
Rainer Maria RilkeRead
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
Bertrand RussellRead