Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.
Henrik IbsenRead
I propose to raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly of the truth.
Interpretation
The quote challenges the notion that the majority opinion is always correct.
Henrik Ibsen's quote emphasizes the importance of individual thought and the need to question prevailing beliefs that are accepted by the majority. It suggests that truth is not determined by popular consensus, but rather is often held by those who dare to challenge the status quo, thus advocating for intellectual independence and critical thinking.
In practice
In a debate about social issues, you might use this quote to highlight the importance of questioning mainstream beliefs.
Labor and trouble one can always get through alone, but it takes two to be glad.
The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say! That is one of these social lies against which an independent, intelligent men must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
I believe that before anything else I'm a human being -- just as much as you are... or at any rate I shall try to become one. I know quite well that most people would agree with you, Torvald, and that you have warrant for it in books; but I can't be satisfied any longer with what most people say, and with what's in books. I must think things out for myself and try to understand them.
Ah, I fancy it is just the same with most of what you call your emancipation. You have read yourself into a number of new ideas and opinions. You have got a sort of smattering of recent discoveries in various fields - discoveries that seem to overthrow certain principles which have hitherto been held impregnable and unassailable. But all this has only been a matter of intellect, Miss West - superficial acquisition. It has not passed into your blood.
One should never put on one's best trousers to go out to fight for freedom.
It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.
I have swallowed up girls and boys, women and men, kings and emperors, cities and realms," said the Lion. It didn't say this as if it were boasting, nor as if it were sorry, nor as if it were angry. It just said it.
Most go to prison not on account of their irreducible uniqueness as people but because they are part of a marginalized sector of the population who never had a chance, who were slated for it early on.
Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. . . . It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forebearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that-being what it is-it falls so short of in fact and in deed.
The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society.
Much is now being said about evangelism; but before we get effective evangelism, we have to get effective evangelists. Evangelism is useless unless it is the work of one devoted to God, willing and glad to suffer all things for God, penetrated by the attractiveness of God. New machinery, adaptations and adjustments, are not the first need... but more devoted, adoring, sacrificial souls.
In the old days, people used to risk their lives in India or in the Americas in order to bring back products which now seem to us to have been of comically little worth.
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