"A minority is powerless while it conforms..." - Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“If you are a seer, whenever you meet a man you will see all that he owns, ay, and much that he pretends to disown, behind him.”

“We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.”

“I am struck by the fact that the more slowly trees grow at first, the sounder they are at the core, and I think that the same is true of human beings. We do not wish to see children precocious, making great strides in their early years like sprouts, producing a soft and perishable timber, but better if they expand slowly at first, as if contending with difficulties, and so are solidified and perfected. Such trees continue to expand with nearly equal rapidity to extreme old age.”

“We forget that there is much more patriotism in having the audacity to differ from the majority than in running before the crowd; we forget that in the resistance of the minority some of the biggest things in our own history have been accomplished, and the man who looks on the Stars and Stripes and doesn't hold a right to say nay to his neighbor, even if the neighbor is of the larger party, has forgotten the history of his country.”

“Shall we then judge a country by the majority, or by the minority? By the minority, surely.”

“The intellectual heritage of the race belongs to the minority.”

“The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”

“Yield, ye arms, to the toga; to civic praise, ye laurels.”

“What all these lofty and vague phrases boil down to is that the court can impose things that the voters don't want and the Constitution does not require, but which are in vogue in circles to which the court responds.”