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: 20111

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

• 1. The quotation is also first found in print in 2011; see Jotaro, The Way of the Warrior: The Dark Secrets of the Samurai Code (New York: Citadel Press, Kensington Publishing Corp., 2011), 124.  (Accessed 1/27/20.) This book was published in May 2011.  The quotation was also reportedly attributed to Jefferson on a statue erected outside a sporting goods store in Springfield, IL, in July 2011; see Mike Kienzler, "Scheels Misquotes Abe...and George Washington...AND Thomas Jefferson," Springfield State Journal-Register, July 21, 2011. Accessed 1/27/20.
• 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.