Quotes about group
page 17

L. Ron Hubbard photo
Ian McCulloch photo
William Stubbs photo
James Fallows photo
Woodrow Wilson photo

“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”

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

Statement on the successful filibuster by anti-war Senators against a bill to arm merchant ships (4 March 1917)
1910s

Bell Hooks photo

“issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them"”

Dril Twitter user

[ Link to tweet https://twitter.com/dril/status/831805955402776576]
Tweets by year, 2017

Margaret Thatcher photo
Wesley Clair Mitchell photo

“In physical science and in industrial technique… we have emancipated ourselves… from the savage dependence upon catastrophes for progress… In science and in industry we are radicals—radicals relying on a tested method. But in matters of social organization we retain a large part of the conservatism characteristic of the savage mind…
The 'social reformer' we have always with us, it is true. Or rather most of us are 'social reformers' of some kind… Yet the story of the past in matters of social organization is not a story that we should like to have continued for a thousand and one years. Reform by agitation or class struggle is a jerky way of moving forward, uncomfortable and wasteful of energy. Are we not intelligent enough to devise a steadier and a more certain method of progress? Most certainly, we could not keep social organization what it is even if we wanted to. We are not emerging from the hazards of war into a safe world. On the contrary, the world is a very dangerous place for a society framed as ours is, and I for one am glad of it.
Taking us all together as one people in a group of mighty peoples, our first and foremost concern is to develop some way of carrying on the infinitely complicated processes of modern industry and interchange day by day, despite all tedium and fatigue, and yet to keep ourselves interested in our work and contented with the division of the product…
What is lacking to achieve that end… is not so much good will as it is knowledge—above all, knowledge of human behavior. Our best hope for the future lies in the extension to social organization of the methods that we already employ in our most progressive fields of effort. In science and in industry… we do not wait for catastrophes to force new ways upon us… We rely, and with success, upon quantitative analysis to point the way; and we advance because we are constantly improving and applying such analysis. While I think that the development of social science offers more hope for solving our social problems than any other line of endeavor, I do not claim that these sciences in their present state are very serviceable.
They are immature, speculative, filled with controversies. Nor have we any certain assurance that they will ever grow into robust manhood, no matter what care we lavish upon them…. Those of us who are concerned with the social sciences… are engaged in an uncertain enterprise; perhaps we shall win no great treasures for mankind. But certainly it is our task to work out this lead with all the intelligence and the energy we possess until its richness or sterility be demonstrated.”

Wesley Clair Mitchell (1874–1948) American statistician

Source: "Statistics and Government," 1919, pp. 45, 47, 48-51; as cited in: Arthur F. Burns. " New Facts on Business Cycles http://www.nber.org/chapters/c0386," in: Arthur F. Burns (ed). The Frontiers of Economic Knowledge. Princeton University Press. 1954. p. 61 - 106; p. 63

“Culture is the collective programming of the mind distinguishing the members of one group or category of people from others.”

Geert Hofstede (1928) Dutch psychologist

Source: Culture's consequences: International differences in work-related values (1980), p. 25; as cited in Rüdiger Pieper (1990) Human Resource Management: An International Comparison. p. 130.

Cesar Chavez photo
Ron White photo
Daniel Levitin photo
Maurice Wilkes photo
Frederick Winslow Taylor photo

“You gentlemen may laugh, but that is true, all right; it sounds ridiculous, I know, but it is fact. Now if the problem were put up to any of you man to develop science of shoveling as it was put up to us, that is, to a group of men who had deliberately set out to develop the science of all kinds of all laboring work, where do you think you would begin? When you started to study the science of shoveling I make the assertion that you would be within two days – just as we were in two days –well on the way toward development of the science of shoveling. At least you would outlined in your minds those elements which required careful, scientific study in order to understand science of shoveling. I do not want to go into all of the details of shoveling, but I will give you some of the elements, one or two of the most important elements of the science of shoveling; that is, the elements that reach further and have more serious consequences than any other. Probably the most important element in the science of shoveling is this: There must be some shovel load at which a first-class shoveler will do his biggest day’s work. What is that load? To illustrate: when we went to the Bethlehem Steel Works and observed the shoveler in the yard of that company, we found that each of the good shovelers in that yard owned his own shovel; they preferred to buy their own shovels rather than to have the company furnish them. There was a larger tonnage of ore shoveled in that woks than of any other material and rice coal came next in tonnage. We would see a first-class shoveler go from shoveling rice coal with a load of 3.5 ponds to the shovel to handling ore from the Massaba Range, with 38 pounds to the shove Now, is 3.5 pounds the proper shovel load or is the 38 pounds the proper load? They cannot both be right. Under scientific management the answer to this question is not a matter of anyone’s opinion; it is a question for accurate, careful, scientific investigation.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor... 1912, p. 111.

André Maurois photo

“Masculinity is about being a man within a group of men. Above all things, masculinity is about what men want from each other.”

Jack Donovan (1974) American activist, editor and writer

The Way of Men is The Way of The Gang
The Way of Men (2012)

Norodom Sihanouk photo
Max Scheler photo

“Impulses of revenge lead to ressentiment the more they change into actual *vindictiveness*, the more their direction shifts toward indeterminate groups of objects which need only share one common characteristic, and the less they are satisfied by vengeance taken on a specific object. If the desire for revenge remains permanently unsatisfied, and especially if the feeling of “being right (lacking in an outburst of rage, but an integral part of revenge) is intensified into the idea of a “duty,” the individual may actually wither away and die. The vindictive person is instinctively and without a conscious act of volition drawn toward events which may give rise to vengefulness, or he tends to see injurious intentions in all kinds of perfectly innocent actions and remarks of others. Great touchiness is indeed frequently a symptom of a vengeful character. The vindictive person is always in search of objects, and in fact he attacks—in the belief that he is simply wreaking vengeance. This vengeance restores his damaged feeling of personal value, his injured “honor,” or it brings “satisfaction” for the wrongs he has endured. When it is repressed, vindictiveness leads to ressentiment, a process which is intensified when the *imagination* of vengeance, too, is repressed—and finally the very emotion of revenge itself. Only then does this *state of mind* become associated with the tendency to detract from the other person's value, which brings an illusory easing of the tension."”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912)

David Ben-Gurion photo

“Yet for many of us, anti-Semitic feeling had little to do with our dedication [to Zionism]. I personally never suffered anti-Semitic persecution. Plonsk was remarkably free of it, or at least the Jews felt well protected in the cocoon of their community life. Nevertheless, and I think this very significant, it was Plonsk that sent the highest proportion of Jews to Eretz Israel from any town in Poland of comparable size. We emigrated not for negative reasons of escape but for the positive purpose of rebuilding a homeland, a place where we wouldn't be perpetual strangers and that through our toil would become irrevocably our own. Life in Plonsk was peaceful enough. There were three main communities: Russians, Jews and Poles. Each lived apart from the others. The Russians as the occupiers kept a firm hand on the civil administration. There were no Polish or Jewish officials. Officials or the police almost never interfered in dealings between Jewish and Polish communities. They disliked both equally and took an aloof attitude to the town's day-to-day life. The number of Jews and Poles in the city were roughly equal, about five thousand each. The Jews, however, formed a compact, centralized group occupying the innermost districts whilst the Poles were more scattered, living in outlying areas and shading off into the peasantry. Consequently, when a gang of Jewish boys met a Polish gang the latter would almost inevitably represent a single suburb and thus be poorer in fighting potential than the Jews who even if their numbers were initially fewer could quickly call on reinforcements from the entire quarter. Far from being afraid of them, they were rather afraid of us. In general, however, relations were amicable, though distant.”

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) Israeli politician, Zionist leader, prime minister of Israel

Memoirs : David Ben-Gurion (1970), p. 36

Alfred Kinsey photo

“At the risk of being repetitious, I would remind the group that we have found the highest frequency of induced abortion in the group which, in general, most frequently uses contraceptives.”

Alfred Kinsey (1894–1956) American scientist (1894–1956)

Abortion in the United States, Report of a Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., (1958)

Susan Ann Sulley photo

“What better job is there for a 17-year-old girl than being in a pop group?”

Susan Ann Sulley (1963) British pop singer

When asked if she had considered staying at school and taking a better job in 1980
BBC Radio Tyne Interview with Yve Ngoo, 10 October 2004

Steve Keen photo
Jonah Goldberg photo
Ilana Mercer photo

“Whether it is committed by a group operating within or without the law, terrorism is still terrorism.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“In Defense of Obama’s Apologizing,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=551 WorldNetDaily.com, May 21, 2010.
2010s, 2010

John Ashcroft photo

“How sad, that the group with the most access to the truth chose in several strategic instances to look the other way.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 263

Frank Herbert photo

“This group is composed of those for whom belief in saucers is tantamount to religion…They believe men from outer space will step in on Earth "before it's too late," put a stop to the atomic bomb threat "by their superior powers," and enforce perpetual peace "for the good of the universe"…”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

On UFO cultists, In "Flying Saucers: Fact or Farce?", San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, "People" supplement, (20 October 1963); reprinted in The Maker of Dune : Insights of a Master of Science Fiction (1987), edited by Tim O'Reilly
General sources

“If there is any group in the world that should be motivated to make improvements, reflecting God's creative nature, it should be Christians.”

Craig Groeschel (1967) American priest

It – How Churches and Leaders Can Get It and Keep It (2008, Zondervan)

Phillip Abbott Luce photo
Murray Bookchin photo
Bill Russell photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Oliver Sacks photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“One of the most natural of reactions during the war was intolerance. But the inevitable disregard for the opinions and feelings of minorities is none the less a disturbing product of war psychology. The slow and difficult advances which tolerance and liberalism have made through long periods of development are dissipated almost in a night when the necessary war-time habits of thought hold the minds of the people. The necessity for a common purpose and a united intellectual front becomes paramount to everything else. But when the need for such a solidarity is past there should be a quick and generous readiness to revert to the old and normal habits of thought. There should be an intellectual demobilization as well as a military demobilization. Progress depends very largely on the encouragement of variety. Whatever tends to standardize the community, to establish fixed and rigid modes of thought, tends to fossilize society. If we all believed the same thing and thought the same thoughts and applied the same valuations to all the occurrences about us, we should reach a state of equilibrium closely akin to an intellectual and spiritual paralysis. It is the ferment of ideas, the clash of disagreeing judgments, the privilege of the individual to develop his own thoughts and shape his own character, that makes progress possible. It is not possible to learn much from those who uniformly agree with us. But many useful things are learned from those who disagree with us; and even when we can gain nothing our differences are likely to do us no harm. In this period of after-war rigidity, suspicion, and intolerance our own country has not been exempt from unfortunate experiences. Thanks to our comparative isolation, we have known less of the international frictions and rivalries than some other countries less fortunately situated. But among some of the varying racial, religious, and social groups of our people there have been manifestations of an intolerance of opinion, a narrowness to outlook, a fixity of judgment, against which we may well be warned. It is not easy to conceive of anything that would be more unfortunate in a community based upon the ideals of which Americans boast than any considerable development of intolerance as regards religion. To a great extent this country owes its beginnings to the determination of our hardy ancestors to maintain complete freedom in religion. Instead of a state church we have decreed that every citizen shall be free to follow the dictates of his own conscience as to his religious beliefs and affiliations. Under that guaranty we have erected a system which certainly is justified by its fruits. Under no other could we have dared to invite the peoples of all countries and creeds to come here and unite with us in creating the State of which we are all citizens.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Chuck Palahniuk photo
Ron Paul photo
Kurt Lewin photo

“To instigate changes toward democracy a situation has to be created for a certain period where the leader is sufficiently in control to rule out influences he does not want and to manipulate the situation to a sufficient degree. The goal of the democratic leader in this transition period will have to be the same as any good teacher, namely to make himself superfluous, to be replaced by indigenous leaders from the group.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

As cited in: M.K. Smith (2001) " Kurt Lewin, groups, experiential learning and action research http://www.infed.org/thinkers/et-lewin.htm". In: The Encyclopedia of Informal Education.
1940s, Resolving social conflicts; selected papers on group dynamics, 1948

L. Ron Hubbard photo
Warren Farrell photo
Ron Paul photo
Madison Grant photo
Dave Barry photo

“The group is only interested in the formal publishing of individuals for the purpose of establishing their social solidarity.”

Laura Riding Jackson (1901–1991) poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer

"The Corpus", from Anarchism Is Not Enough (London: Jonathan Cape, 1928)

Sheikh Hasina photo

“[The fundamentalist groups] are trying, no doubt about it, and there are some people trying to encourage them, but we have controlled the situation.”

Sheikh Hasina (1947) Prime Minister of Bangladesh

In an interview of The Guardian (16 September 2015) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/21/bangladesh-prime-minister-rejects-accusations-of-authoritarian-rule (21 September 2015).

Francis Heylighen photo
Margaret Sanger photo

“The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Speech quoted in "Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do." The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.

Morarji Desai photo
Joe Biden photo

“When there is a range of opinion in the group, communications tend to be directed towards those members whose opinions are at the extremes of the range.”

John Thibaut (1917–1986) American social psychologist

Leon Festinger and John Thibaut. "Interpersonal communication in small groups." The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 46.1 (1951): 92.

Rousas John Rushdoony photo
Carole King photo

“…the lunatic fringe group called Neturei Karta, whose total world membership is about 10…”

Charles Foster Johnson (1953) American musician

September 25, 2008 http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/31360_Reuters_Hearts_Neturei_Karta&only

Bruce Fein photo
Linus Torvalds photo

“The fact that ACPI was designed by a group of monkeys high on LSD, and is some of the worst designs in the industry obviously makes running it at any point pretty damn ugly.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Message, linux-kernel mailing list, 2005-07-31, IU, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0507.3/2331.html,
2000s, 2005

André Maurois photo
Ted Nelson photo
Enver Hoxha photo

“This is a wrong course the Chinese comrades are trying to lead us on to, it is an opportunist road of vacillation and concessions to the Khrushchev traitor group which finds itself in grave difficulties, and is intriguing in order to escape defeat.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Enver Hoxha, Reflections on China, 1962-1972, vol. I http://redstarlibrary.org/?p=471 (Tirana: 8 Nëntori Publishing House, 1979)
Writings, Reflections on China, 1962-1972

Linda McQuaig photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Michel Seuphor photo

“A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"The Morals Charge," The New York Times (1974-05-14)

Michał Kalecki photo
Daniel J. Boorstin photo

“The cities of Italy are now deluged with droves of these creatures [tour groups], for they never separate, and you see them, forty in number, pouring along a street with their director — now in front, now at the rear, circling them like a sheep dog — and really the process is as like herding as may be.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Charles James Lever, Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men and Women and Other Things in General (Blackwood's Magazine, 1864-1865): "Continental Excursionists" [Adamant Media Corporation, 2001, ISBN 0-543-90729-5</small>], p. 243. Quoted by Boorstin in The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961) [Vintage edition, 1992, <small>ISBN 0-679-74180-1], Ch. 3: From Traveler to Tourist: The Lost Art of Travel, p. 88.
Misattributed

Clay Shirky photo
Jeffrey Tucker photo
Daniel Tosh photo
Adrienne Rich photo
Piet Mondrian photo

“Though I do, of course agree with the principles you have mentioned, I am returning the paper unsigned, as I do not want to belong to a group. A group of people with one aim is not as yet a single-minded group and as this does not exist, a consistent group remains impossible. And a larger group only makes sense for joint exhibitions and for spreading ideas. I will therefore not participate in the other group either, but I have promised my collaboration in this respect. If you definitely want to form a group, you can always invite myself and others who are proved to be suitable. Only on such a basis I will collaborate with the other group as well.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote of Mondrian, in a letter to Theo van Doesburg, 1930; as cited in De Stijl 1917-1931 - The Dutch Contribution to Modern Art, by H.L.C. Jaffé http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/jaff001stij01_01/jaff001stij01_01.pdf; J.M. Meulenhoff, Amsterdam 1956, p. 30
Van Doesburg had attempted to form a small union of Parisian painters and sculptors who all subscribed to the principles of abstraction, the group was to be called 'Abstraction-création'. A periodical of this group appeared under the title 'Art Concret'
1930's

Edward Thomson photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
William H. Starbuck photo

““Organization theory,” a term that appeared in the middle of the twentieth century, has multiple meanings. When it first emerged, the term expressed faith in scientific research as a way to gain understanding of human beings and their interactions. Although scientific research had been occurring for several centuries, the idea that scientific research might enhance understanding of human behavior was considerably newer and rather few people appreciated it. Simon (1950, 1952-3, 1952) was a leading proponent for the creation of “organization theory”, which he imagined as including scientific management, industrial engineering, industrial psychology, the psychology of small groups, human-resources management, and strategy. The term “organization theory” also indicated an aspiration to state generalized, abstract propositions about a category of social systems called “organizations,” which was a very new concept. Before and during the 1800s, people had regarded armies, schools, churches, government agencies, and social clubs as belonging to distinct categories, and they had no name for the union of these categories. During the 1920s, some people began to perceive that diverse kinds of medium-sized social systems might share enough similarities to form a single, unified category. They adopted the term “organization” for this unified category.”

William H. Starbuck (1934) American academic

William H. Starbuck and Philippe Baumard (2009). "The seeds, blossoming, and scant yield of organization theory," in: Jacques Rojot et. al (eds.) Comportement organisationnel - Volume 3 De Boeck Supérieur. p. 15

Kurt Lewin photo

“One should view the present situation – the status quo – as being maintained by certain conditions or forces. A culture – for instance, the food habits of a certain group at a given time – is not a static affair but a live process like a river which moves but still keeps to a recognizable form…Food habits do not occur in empty space. They are part and parcel of the daily rhythm of being awake and asleep; of being alone and in a group; of earning a living and playing; of being a member of a town, a family, a social class, a religious group... in a district with good groceries and restaurants or in an area of poor and irregular food supply. Somehow all these factors affect food habits at any given time. They determine the food habits of a group every day anew just as the amount of water supply and the nature of the river bed determine the flow of the river, its constancy or change.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1943) "Psychological ecology". In: D. Cartwright (Ed.) Field Theory in Social Science. London: Social Science Paperbacks. As cited in: Bernard Burnes (2004) " Kurt Lewin and the Planned Approach to Change: A Re-appraisal https://blackboard.le.ac.uk/bbcswebdav/institution/College%20of%20Social%20Science/School%20of%20Management/DL%20Materials/MBA/2.%20Organizational%20Behaviour/Section%208/Burnes.pdf" in: Journal of Management Studies. Vol 41. Nr 6. p. 977-1002.
1940s

Samuel Bowles photo
Norman Mailer photo

“What characterizes a member of a minority group is that he is forced to see himself as both exceptional and insignificant, marvelous and awful, good and evil.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

"A Speech at Berkeley on Vietnam Day"
Cannibals and Christians (1966)

David Horowitz photo

“They are radical groups who identify with the violent jihad of Islamacist terror organizations like al-Qaeda, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas. And they have the support of a radical culture that regards America as the Great Satan, and Muslims and Arabs as the people whom America oppresses.”

David Horowitz (1939) Neoconservative activist, writer

[David, Horowitz, http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/horowitz.html, "As a former 'Radical,' I see the threat of Militant Islam on our Campuses,", jewishworldreview.com, April 08, 2003, 2010-01-05]
2003

Warren Farrell photo
Mary Parker Follett photo
Troy Perry photo
Seymour Papert photo
Arlo Guthrie photo
Aron Ra photo
Howard Bloom photo
Joseph Beuys photo
Frances Kellor photo
Claude Lévi-Strauss photo

“If we judge the achievements of other social groups in relation to the kind of objectives we set ourselves, we have at times to acknowledge their superiority; but in doing so we acquire the right to judge them, and hence to condemn all their other objectives which do not coincide with those we approve of. We implicitly acknowledge that our society with its customs and norms enjoys a privileged position, since an observer belonging to another social group would pass different verdicts on the same examples. This being so, how can the study of anthropology claim to be scientific? To reestablish an objective approach, we must abstain from making judgments of this kind. We must accept the fact that each society has made a certain choice, within the range of existing human possibilities, and that the various choices cannot be compared with each other: they are all equally valid. But in this case a new problem arises; while in the first instance we were in danger of falling into obscurantism, in the form of a blind refusal of everything foreign to us, we now run the risk of accepting a kind of eclecticism which would prevent us denouncing any feature of a given culture — not even cruelty, injustice and poverty, against which the very society suffering these ills may be protesting. And since these abuses also exist in our society, what right have we to combat them at home, if we accept them as inevitable when they occur elsewhere?”

Source: Tristes Tropiques (1955), Chapter 38 : A Little Glass of Rum, pp.385-386