Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia

One man with courage is a majority (Spurious Quotation)

Find out why scholars don't believe Thomas Jefferson wrote or said, "One man with courage is a majority."

A modern-day portrait of Thomas Jefferson in early 19-century attire with a speech bubble next to his head that says, "I said what?!"

Quotation: "One man with courage is a majority."

Variations: "One man with courage makes a majority."

Sources consulted:

  1. Founders Online
  2. Retirement papers

Other attributions: Andrew Jackson

Earliest known attribution to Thomas Jefferson: 19661

Comments: This quotation has not been found in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.  The headline quotation, "one man with courage is a majority," is most often attributed to Jefferson, but its listed variation, "one with courage makes a majority," is more often attributed to Andrew Jackson.  That attribution is likely also spurious.  Other similar variations have been positively traced to other sources.2

- Anna Berkes, 1/27/20; updated 8/12/21

Footnotes

  1. Izaak Walton League of America, Guidelines to Conservation Education Action (Glenview, IL: Izaak Walton League of America, 1966), 100.
  2. E.g. "...any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already." (Henry David Thoreau, "Resistance to Civil Government," in Aesthetic Papers, ed. Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (New York: Putnam, 1849), 198; "The man who is right is a majority." (Frederick Douglass, THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, speech to the National Free Soil Convention at Pittsburgh, August 11, 1852); "...one, on God's side, is a majority." (Wendell Phillips, "Harper's Ferry" (A lecture delivered on "The Lesson of the Hour" in Brooklyn, NY, November 1, 1859) in Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1884), 272.