Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Genuine, but reworded. In the 1904 notebook, first printed in Paine’s edition of 1935, he wrote ‘it is time to reform’, then added ‘(or pause and reflect)’ as an alternative. The popular form keeps only the afterthought, changes ‘find that you are’ to ‘find yourself’, and drops the blunter maxim just before it, ‘The Majority is always in the wrong.’ Twain never published it.

A private note, published only after his death: two of the ‘Maxims in the Rough’ he jotted down in his notebook in late 1904, among drafts on miracles and credulity and on free speech being ‘confined to the dead’. He wrote several versions of some of them, trying out wordings.

Agreeing with most people is a reason to check your views, not a proof that they are right.

• A misquotationWhenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect). Closer to the notebook, as given by TwainQuotes (‘Notebook, 1904’). Where it was seen

• Henrik Ibsen, 1882: In An Enemy of the People Dr. Stockmann tells a public meeting that the majority is never right.

Doubt, Truth, Reason, Wisdom

• Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.
• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Without deviation, progress is not possible. Frank Zappa
• To be great is to be misunderstood. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. Ralph Waldo Emerson

• twainquotes.com/Majority.html
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
• archive.org/details/MarkTwainsNotebook

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Attributed to Mark Twain. Not in these words. The idea is in Mark Twain’s Notebook, prepared for publication with comments by Albert Bigelow Paine (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1935), 393. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/side-of-the-majority-pause-and-reflect/ (checked 21 October 2026).

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