This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
Majority | Organization | Right | Wrong |
In all the more advanced communities the great majority of things are worse done by the intervention of government than the individuals most interested in the matter would do them, or cause them to be done, if left to themselves.
Cause | Government | Majority | Government |
Being morally good, for the majority of Americans, means following the norms and values of their society or culture - whether this be their peer culture, their church, their country, or a combination of these. The theory that morality is relative to societal norms is known in moral philosophy as cultural relativism. Many others claim that morality is relative to the individual and is different for every person depending on what they feel. This theory is known in philosophy as ethical subjectivism.
Church | Culture | Good | Individual | Majority | Means | Morality | Philosophy | Society | Society | Following |
The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
Failure | Majority | Men | Persistence | Failure |
The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat; men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority - demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness to sacrifice - comes graceful and beloved as a bride.
Bride | Majority | Men | Opposition | Prudence | Prudence | Sacrifice | Thrift | Crisis |
The seniority system keeps a handful of old men... in control of the Congress. These old men stand inplacably across the paths that could lead us toward a better future. But worse than they, I think, are the majority of members of both Houses who continue to submit to the senility system.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
The test of democracy is not whether the majority prevails, but whether the minority is tolerated.
We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.
Freedom | Individual | Majority | Order |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
In the overwhelming majority of phenomena whose regularity and invariability have led to the formulation of the postulate of causality, the common element underlying the consistency observed - is chance.
Consistency | Majority | Phenomena |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
While irrational faith is the acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority says so, rational faith is rooted in an independent conviction based upon one's own productive observing and thinking in spite of the majority's opinion.
Acceptance | Authority | Faith | Majority | Thinking |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The revolutionary and critical thinker is in a certain way always outside of his society while of course he is at the same time also in it. That he is in it is obvious, but why is he outside it? First, because he is not brainwashed by the ruling ideology, that is to say, he has an extraordinary kind of independence of thought and feeling; hence he can have a greater objectivity than the average person has. There are many emotional factors too. And certainly I do not mean to enter here into the complex problem of the revolutionary thinker. But it seems to me essential that in a certain sense he transcends his society. You may say he transcends it because of the new historical developments and possibilities he is aware of, while the majority still think in traditional terms.
Majority | Objectivity | Sense | Society | Thought | Time | Society | Think | Thought |
Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious dogma or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. The media exaggerate their numbers and importance. The media rarely mention the fact that the great majority of religious people belong to moderate denominations that treat science with respect, or the fact that the great majority of scientists treat religion with respect so long as religion does not claim jurisdiction over scientific questions.
Arrogance | Dogma | Majority | People | Religion | Respect | Science | Respect |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp.