"A minority may be right, and a majority is always wrong"
About this Quote
Ibsen’s line isn’t a cute contrarian bumper sticker; it’s a provocation aimed at the social machinery that turns comfort into “truth.” The first half is almost modest: a minority may be right. The second half snaps shut like a trap: and a majority is always wrong. That absolutism is the point. Ibsen isn’t doing statistics; he’s indicting consensus as a moral anesthetic, the way communities launder self-interest into virtue simply by sharing it.
The intent is less to crown every outsider a hero than to shame the crowd for mistaking numbers for legitimacy. “Majority” here functions as a cultural force: respectability, public opinion, the polite chorus that keeps inconvenient facts off the table. When Ibsen says “always,” he’s daring the reader to object - and in objecting, to feel how reflexively we defend the collective.
The subtext is recognizably Ibsenian: modern society prizes harmony over honesty, and it punishes anyone who introduces friction. His plays repeatedly stage that collision, where the person insisting on reality gets branded unstable, selfish, or immoral because stability matters more than truth. The minority becomes a narrative problem to be managed, not a voice to be heard.
Context matters. Writing in a 19th-century Europe infatuated with bourgeois respectability and increasingly democratic majoritarian politics, Ibsen is warning that progress can fossilize into a new conformity. He’s also advertising his own artistic posture: the dramatist as irritant, refusing the audience’s desire to be reassured.
The intent is less to crown every outsider a hero than to shame the crowd for mistaking numbers for legitimacy. “Majority” here functions as a cultural force: respectability, public opinion, the polite chorus that keeps inconvenient facts off the table. When Ibsen says “always,” he’s daring the reader to object - and in objecting, to feel how reflexively we defend the collective.
The subtext is recognizably Ibsenian: modern society prizes harmony over honesty, and it punishes anyone who introduces friction. His plays repeatedly stage that collision, where the person insisting on reality gets branded unstable, selfish, or immoral because stability matters more than truth. The minority becomes a narrative problem to be managed, not a voice to be heard.
Context matters. Writing in a 19th-century Europe infatuated with bourgeois respectability and increasingly democratic majoritarian politics, Ibsen is warning that progress can fossilize into a new conformity. He’s also advertising his own artistic posture: the dramatist as irritant, refusing the audience’s desire to be reassured.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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