"A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong"
About this Quote
Ibsen distills a combative credo: truth and right are not decided by counting heads, and popular opinion tends to sanctify comfort, habit, and self-interest. The line echoes the defiant speeches of Dr. Stockmann in An Enemy of the People, where he denounces the town’s “compact majority” for suppressing an inconvenient scientific finding about contaminated baths. What he faces is not reasoned disagreement but a chorus of economic anxiety, cowardice, and press opportunism. In that crucible, the majority is wrong not because numbers corrupt logic in principle, but because numbers often coalesce around what is easiest to believe.
The provocation lies in the word always. Ibsen writes drama, not a treatise, and he heightens the claim to expose how communities protect their myths. A new idea normally begins as a minority position, carried by a few stubborn individuals willing to accept loss and ridicule. If truth is bound to initial unpopularity, then moral courage requires standing against the warm tide of agreement. The minority may be right precisely because it has not yet been rewarded for conforming.
Across Ibsen’s plays, the pattern recurs. Nora’s departure in A Doll’s House defies the moral arithmetic of her time. Brand’s absolutism and Peer Gynt’s opportunism stage the battle between integrity and compromise. Even The Wild Duck complicates the ethic of truth-telling, showing that smashing comforting illusions can wound the innocent; yet the danger Ibsen fears more is the communal lie that becomes policy.
The line is not an attack on democratic institutions so much as a warning against confusing procedure with truth. Votes can allocate power; they cannot certify reality or righteousness. Majorities often mistake their size for wisdom and elevate pragmatism into a creed. Ibsen asks the reader to distrust applause, to prize independent judgment, and to remember that the path from unpopular fact to accepted knowledge runs through lonely dissent.
The provocation lies in the word always. Ibsen writes drama, not a treatise, and he heightens the claim to expose how communities protect their myths. A new idea normally begins as a minority position, carried by a few stubborn individuals willing to accept loss and ridicule. If truth is bound to initial unpopularity, then moral courage requires standing against the warm tide of agreement. The minority may be right precisely because it has not yet been rewarded for conforming.
Across Ibsen’s plays, the pattern recurs. Nora’s departure in A Doll’s House defies the moral arithmetic of her time. Brand’s absolutism and Peer Gynt’s opportunism stage the battle between integrity and compromise. Even The Wild Duck complicates the ethic of truth-telling, showing that smashing comforting illusions can wound the innocent; yet the danger Ibsen fears more is the communal lie that becomes policy.
The line is not an attack on democratic institutions so much as a warning against confusing procedure with truth. Votes can allocate power; they cannot certify reality or righteousness. Majorities often mistake their size for wisdom and elevate pragmatism into a creed. Ibsen asks the reader to distrust applause, to prize independent judgment, and to remember that the path from unpopular fact to accepted knowledge runs through lonely dissent.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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