Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

This saying is widely attributed to the American anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901–1978), a prominent public intellectual who wrote and lectured extensively on culture, social change, and civic responsibility in mid‑20th‑century America. The line circulates most often in activist, nonprofit, and educational settings as a compact encouragement to grassroots organizing. However, despite its ubiquity on posters and in speeches, a definitive primary-text location in Mead’s published books, articles, or recorded talks is difficult to pin down; it appears to have spread largely through quotation anthologies and institutional “Mead” attributions rather than a clearly citable first appearance.

The quote argues that meaningful historical change is not typically initiated by large, passive majorities but by small, organized minorities who combine moral seriousness (“thoughtful”) with sustained action (“committed”). Its second sentence sharpens the claim into a general theory of history: reforms, revolutions, and cultural shifts begin when a determined few create new norms that others later adopt. The rhetoric is deliberately empowering—recasting “smallness” as an advantage rather than a limitation—and it functions as a call to agency, implying that waiting for broad consensus is less effective than building a focused coalition capable of persuasion, example, and institutional pressure.

1) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
2) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.”
3) “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.”