Celebrating the Fourth

Your support makes programs like Independence Day at Monticello possible. Help us continue our important work.

Donate Now

One man with courage is a majority (Spurious Quotation)

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: 1966[1]

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

References

  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.

Spurious Quotations

Related Entries

ADDRESS:
1050 Monticello Loop
Charlottesville, VA 22902
GENERAL INFORMATION:
(434) 984-9800