“The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs.”
The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)
Source: Bachelor Boys: The Young Ones Book
“The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs.”
The Decline and Fall of Science (1976)
Source: Russia Under The Bolshevik Regime (1994), p. 245
Mansfield, Karl. "The 5-Minute Interview: Stella Vine: 'There have been a few times" http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_/ai_n15873617, The Independent, (2005-11-28)
On backing the Amnesty International charity.
1960s, Freedom From The Known (1969)
Context: Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
“Extreme violence has a way of preventing us from seeing the interests it serves.”
Source: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)
“It takes someone very special to help you forget someone very special.”
Oliver's Story film's tagline
“Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science.”
Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 22. ( Chapter 1 https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/koffka.htm, online at marxists.org)
Context: Psychology is a very unsatisfactory science. Comparing the vast body of systematised and recognised facts in physics with those in psychology one will doubt the advisability of teaching the latter to anybody who does not intend to become a professional psychologist, one might even doubt the advisability of training professional psychologists. But when one considers the potential contribution which psychology can make to our understanding of the universe, one's attitude may be changed. Science becomes easily divorced from life. The mathematician needs an escape from the thin air of his abstractions, beautiful as they are; the physicist wants to revel in sounds that are soft, mellow, and melodious, that seem to reveal mysteries which are hidden under the curtain of waves and atoms and mathematical equations; and even the biologist likes to enjoy the antics of his dog on Sundays unhampered by his weekday conviction that in reality they - are but chains of machine-like reflexes