Dorothee Soelle Quote

There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to then (Henry David Thoreau quotes here are found in Walden or, Life in the Woods, and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience). Thoreau criticizes those who are content to have an opinion, and he calls for a deliberate and practical denial of (the state's) authority. He envisages conscious and active minorities to whom the government has to pay attention. His political hopes are founded on this active and conscious wise minority.His problem then - and ours today - is that the minorities are themselves paralyzed by a quantitative understanding of democracy. Men generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them . . . A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight.