Faith & Spirit Quote by Thomas Brackett Reed

Moral certainty is a comforting arithmetic, until you remember who runs the polling place. Thomas Brackett Reed, a hard-nosed congressional tactician, is needling the pieties that politicians love to borrow from religion: the idea that righteousness automatically carries authority. "One, with God, is always a majority" flatters the lone dissenter, turns conscience into a kind of instant mandate. Then Reed snaps the halo off with the punchline: "many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted". History, he implies, is full of people who were right in principle and dead in practice.

The line works because it refuses to choose between idealism and realism. Reed grants the emotional power of the first clause - a slogan fit for sermons and stump speeches - but he exposes its hidden hazard: it can become a substitute for strategy, coalition-building, and attention to institutions. The stake isn't just medieval cruelty; it's the modern state's ability to punish dissent while everyone else congratulates themselves on procedural fairness. "While the votes were being counted" is the real sting, a cynical picture of due process as delay, a democracy so slow or compromised that it can certify outcomes after irreversible harm is done.

As a politician speaking from inside the machine, Reed is also warning reformers and moral crusaders: being correct is not the same as being protected. Majorities are not metaphysical; they're manufactured, enforced, and sometimes weaponized against the very people who think God is on their side.