“To be effective men must act together, and to act together they must have a common understanding and a common object.”

—  Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse

Source: Liberalism (1911), Chapter III, The Movement Of Theory, p. 30.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "To be effective men must act together, and to act together they must have a common understanding and a common object." by Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse?
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse photo
Leonard Trelawny Hobhouse 24
British sociologist 1864–1929

Related quotes

Woodrow Wilson photo

“The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act, and serve together!”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Proclamation to the American People (15 April 1917)
1910s

Norman Lamm photo

“… a moral consideration of the utmost importance for us: we must respect individual differences, yet we must coordinate, work together, and act as one.”

Norman Lamm (1927) American rabbi

Seventy faces: articles of faith (2002)

Saul D. Alinsky photo

“Change comes from power, and power comes from organization. In order to act, people must get together.”

Saul D. Alinsky (1909–1972) American community organizer and writer

Source: Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971), p. 113

Luther H. Gulick photo

“Administration has to do with getting things done; with the accomplishment of defined objectives. The science of administration is thus the system of knowledge whereby men may understand relationships, predict results, and influence outcomes in any situation where men are organized at work together for a common purpose.”

Luther H. Gulick (1892–1993) American academic

Source: "Science, values and public administration," 1937, p. 189; cited in: Marshall W. Meyer (1985), Limits to Bureaucratic Growth, p. 18

Woodrow Wilson photo

“We cannot have general peace for the asking, or by the mere arrangements of a peace conference. It cannot be pieeed together out of individual understandings between powerful states. All the parties to this war must join in the settlement of every issue anywhere involved in it; beeause what we are seeing is a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain and every item of it must be submitted to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

1910s, Address to Congress: Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances (1918)
Context: There shall be no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damage. Peoples are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference or an understanding between rivals and antagonists. National aspirations must be respected; peoples may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. "Self-determination" is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of actions which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril. We cannot have general peace for the asking, or by the mere arrangements of a peace conference. It cannot be pieeed together out of individual understandings between powerful states. All the parties to this war must join in the settlement of every issue anywhere involved in it; beeause what we are seeing is a peace that we can all unite to guarantee and maintain and every item of it must be submitted to the common judgment whether it be right and fair, an act of justice, rather than a bargain between sovereigns.

Andrew Carnegie photo

“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.”

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) American businessman and philanthropist
Winston S. Churchill photo

“Although trade is important, there are other and stronger bonds of Empire, and since the Conference of 1926 nothing but common interests and traditions have held the Empire together. But those are mighty ties, incomprehensible to Europeans, which have drawn millions of men from the far corners of the earth to the battlefields of France, and we must trust to them to continue to draw us together.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Toronto (16 August 1929), quoted in Martin Gilbert, The Churchill Documents, Volume 12: The Wilderness Years, 1929–1935 (Michigan: Hillsdale Press, 2012), p. 51
Early career years (1898–1929)

David Hume photo

“Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 6: Of The Independency of Parliament; first line often paraphrased as "It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave."
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)
Context: It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact. But to satisfy us on this head, we may consider, that men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.

Jean Monnet photo

“Make men work together show them that beyond their differences and geographical boundaries there lies a common interest.”

Jean Monnet (1888–1979) French political economist regarded by many as a chief architect of European unity

Jean Monnet 1888-1979

William Ewart Gladstone photo

“In my opinion the third sound principle is this—to strive to cultivate and maintain, ay, to the very uttermost, what is called the concert of Europe; to keep the Powers of Europe in union together. And why? Because by keeping all in union together you neutralize and fetter and bind up the selfish aims of each. I am not here to flatter either England or any of them. They have selfish aims, as, unfortunately, we in late years have too sadly shown that we too have had selfish aims; but then common action is fatal to selfish aims. Common action means common objects; and the only objects for which you can unite together the Powers of Europe are objects connected with the common good of them all. That, gentlemen, is my third principle of foreign policy.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in West Calder, Scotland (27 November 1879), quoted in W. E. Gladstone, Midlothian Speeches 1879 (Leicester University Press, 1971), pp. 115-116.
1870s

Related topics