Leaderless Groups Quotes

We are attempting to build, within our movement, non-exploitative ways of relating to one another based on trust and concern rather than political expediency. We have serious personal/political intentions in breaking down hierarchical and elitist structures, and for experimenting with leaderless groups and collective decision making. In dealing with the media these revolutionary principles and practices are destroyed. The media works to create leaders, it knows no way of relating to us on our own terms. Being interviewed and presented as a leader is a real ego trip
the media brings out the most counter-revolutionary traits in people. Elitism, dissension and division are the ultimate results. ~ Nancy Ferro

I felt I was finally in a position to affect not only the artistic content of the American theatre, but also its institutional structures. This has been an important goal of mine, as there have always been a variety of issues - artistic freedom, author's rights, access by minority groups - which have concerned me and even influenced my decision to become a playwright in the first place. ~ David Henry Hwang

What is missing from the policy analyst's tool kit
and from the set of accepted, well-developed theories of human organization
is an adequately specified theory of collective action whereby a group of principals can organize themselves voluntarily to retain the residuals of their own efforts. ~ Elinor Ostrom

My coherence-creating groups are going to put out all this mischief-mongership in the world. ~ Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

To-day the two groups of Negroes, the one in the North, the other in the South, represent these divergent ethical tendencies, the first tending toward radicalism, the other toward hypocritical compromise. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Democracy is only good for a society where individuals are educated and have the ability to differentiate right from wrong without any influences from the outside. India is the biggest democracy in the world, yet, why is it so venal, divided and poor? America is the greatest democracy of the world, yet, it only has two main political parties, which are heavily influenced by lobbyists from religious groups, and powerful institutions like businesses, trade unions and think-tanks. In contrast, China is a nation ruled by one party, yet it has prospered during the last three decades, which is nothing less than a miracle. No other country on earth has ever achieved that feat. No system is good or bad for all. I am not saying democracy is bad, but it is not good for all. It can be good or bad for certain periods of time, circumstances and societies. There is no such thing as one idea fits all."

FROM MY NO.7 BOOK COMING SOON.... ~ Tim I. Gurung

The small tuft of fronds or katydid legs above each eye, still
numbering the units in each group;
the shadbones regularly set about the mouth, to droop or rise ~ Marianne Moore

Images of the world are Renormalization Group fixed points. ~ David Mumford

When I'm asked about the relevance to Black people of what I do, I take that as an affront. It presupposes that Black people have never been involved in exploring the heavens, but this is not so. Ancient African empires - Mali, Songhai, Egypt - had scientists, astronomers. The fact is that space and its resources belong to all of us, not to any one group. ~ Mae Jemison

This work is not easy, and it never goes smoothly. Because we are hopelessly committed to both individual and group effectiveness, groups committed to public or civic value are rarely permanent. Instead, groups need to acquire a culture that rewards their members for doing that hard work. It takes this kind of group effort to get what we need, not just what we want; understanding how to create and maintain is one of the great challenges of our era. ~ Clay Shirky

Keeping pigeons without a licence is illegal as well, but we can't have people going round shooting pigeon-keepers, can we? It is the job of the RUC to enforce the law in Northern Ireland, not paramilitary groups, not vigilantes, not 'concerned citizens', it's our responsibility and ours alone," McCallister said which made me proud of him. Not quite tears-in-eyes but maybe warm-glow-in-tummy. ~ Adrian McKinty

Racism in society often works through a divide and conquer strategy, more often than not it is also intertwined with classism as well as other forms of oppression. Structural racism can divide a community that would be stronger together, by keeping individual groups entrenched in their own class - in this case, caste discrimination. ~ Nikesh Shukla

War is an attempt of one group to impose its will upon another group by armed violence. ~ Scott Nearing

I never thought that the music called "jazz" was ever meant to reach just a small group of people, or become a museum thing locked under glass like all the other dead things that were once considered artistic. ~ Miles Davis

The genius of apartheid was convincing people who were the overwhelming majority to turn on each other. Apart hate, is what is was. You separate people into groups and make them hate one another so you can run them all. ~ Trevor Noah

You know, being Jewish is problematic. Most people really don't know what exactly it means to be a Jew. We belong to a community of suffering, and that's what binds us together. But we are also extremely diverse. That's something I wish people who hate Jews as a group because they think they're so different would understand. We're also completely different within our own group! Essentially, we're just part of a community that has suffered a great deal, and not just in the Holocaust. ~ Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

I think for a group that has a reputation for being shy and elusive, we're actually outspoken. ~ Stevie Jackson

Hall & Oates is one of the few musical groups as satisfying now as it was back then. There's something incredibly musically satisfying about their songs. Nothing has diminished my love for them. ~ Ben Gibbard

Like all persecuted minority groups, they strike back by forming cabals, by "taking over" certain spheres of activity (in the arts, for instance), and by purposely provocative behavior. ~ Sydney J. Harris

Polarization (is) a tendency for groups to form judgments that are more extreme than individuals' personal opinions. ~ Alexandra Robbins

A person with low self-esteem is suffering from loneliness even when he is amongst large groups of people, whereas a person with high self-esteem is enjoying solitude out of choice. Loneliness is the pain of being alone, solitude is the pleasure of being alone. A person with high self-esteem is really saying I enjoy my company. I may be physically alone, but I am with myself. ~ Shiv Khera

Assigning work projects based on an employee's strengths may be critical to your group's productivity. You may discover you had a Michael Jordan on your team but couldn't see it because you were only asking him to play baseball. ~ John Medina

I came to the realization that a strong female is frightening to everybody, because all societies are male-dominated - black societies, poor people, rich people, any racial group, they're all dominated by men. A strong female is going to threaten everybody across the board. ~ Madonna Ciccone

Now people can generally be classified into two groups: the mediocre realists and the mediocre dreamers. ~ Haruki Murakami

I'm into paradoxes. I wanted to make an album about them, but the group told me I was a pretentious fart. They were right. ~ Brian May

And the inner dynamics of Hollywood are like politics. Say you give a script to a group of executives - they all sit around, afraid to voice an opinion, saying nothing, waiting to know what the consensus is. Just like focus groups, opinion polls or a cabinet. ~ Joe Eszterhas

Groups that work in black neighborhoods around the country have contended that much of subprime lending is 'predatory lending.' ~ Bill Dedman

Unfortunately, most scientists were radicals, socialists, and liberals. There was hardly a conservative among them. And they believed that the truths discovered by science were for humankind to share, and should never be kept secret in the service of one regime or country. So while the American government was keeping this huge project top secret, the scientists held discussion groups about sharing nuclear technology with all the nations of the world. Oppie himself was suspect: the only reason he was not in the Communist Party was that he never joined clubs. ~ Ken Follett

People learn a lot about what they think they know about other people from what they see in the media. If they see certain types of images reproduced over and over again for other groups that limit them to narrow types of roles and portrayals, they start to take those prejudices into their interactions with those people in real society, and that creates all kinds of discriminatory problems. ~ Darnell M. Hunt

Groups do not have experiences except insofar as all their members do. And there are no experiences ... that all the members of a scientific community must share in the course of a [scientific] revolution. Revolutions should be described not in terms of group experience but in terms of the varied experiences of individual group members. Indeed, that variety itself turns out to play an essential role in the evolution of scientific knowledge. ~ Thomas Kuhn

I think actors are divided into two groups: one that wants to be an actor to become famous and rich, and the other that wants to be an actor because they have to be. I'm more in the second group. ~ Franka Potente

[In] the 21st century, the mainstream can satisfy your every whim. I guess the idea of walking around with groups of people dressed the same and saying, "I'm only into ska" or "I'm only into whatever" - is kind of restrictive in the 21st century. I don't know if it's a bad thing that these movements have run their course. I think what I miss about it is the collective experience. ~ Don Letts

With the help of pressure groups, government now has crossed over into the final frontier of bigotry, what writer and Catholic theologian Michael Novak calls 'Christophobia .' Traditional Christians and Jews are the new counterculture - aliens in a land their forefathers' beliefs and values established and built. ~ Cal Thomas

Maybe we've been brainwashed by 130 years of Yankee history, but Southern identity now has more to do with food, accents, manners, music than the Confederate past. It's something that's open to both races, a variety of ethnic groups and people who move here. ~ John Shelton Reed

Nothing has given me more hope recently than to observe how simple conversations give birth to actions that can change lives and restore our faith in the future. There is no more powerful way to initiate significant social change than to start a conversation. When a group of people discover that they share a common concern, that's when the process of change begins. ~ Margaret J. Wheatley

By playing on people's desire to belong to groups, Facebook creates a new, inclusive society. After all, Facebook is not like Harvard College. Anyone with access to the Internet can sign up. ~ Amity Shlaes

Rich white Protestant men have held on to some measure of power in America almost solely by getting women, blacks, and other disadvantaged groups to wear crippling foot fashions. This keeps them too busy with corns and bunions to compete in the job market. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Finally, our studies of the preparatory stages of all revolutions bring us to the conclusion that not a single revolution has originated in parliaments or in any other representative assembly. All began with the people. And no revolution has appeared in full armor--born, like Minerva out of the head of Jupiter, in a day. They all had their periods of incubation, during which the masses were very slowly becoming imbued with the revolutionary spirit, grew bolder, commenced to hope, and step by step emerged from their former indifference and resignation. And the awakening of the revolutionary spirit always took place in such a manner that, at first, single individuals, deeply moved by the existing state of things, protested against it, one by one. Many perished--"uselessly," the arm-chair critic would say; but the indifference of society was shaken by these progenitors. The dullest and most narrow-minded people were compelled to reflect,--Why should men, young, sincere, and full of strength, sacrifice their lives in this way? It was impossible to remain indifferent--it was necessary to take a stand, for or against: thought was awakening. Then, little by little, small groups came to be imbued with the same spirit of revolt; they also rebelled--sometimes in the hope of local success--in strikes or in small revolts against some official whom they disliked, or in order to get food for their hungry children, but frequently also without any hope of success: simply because the conditio ~ Pyotr Kropotkin

It's easy to look at the vampires as a metaphor for any feared or misunderstood group. It's also easy to look at them as a metaphor for a shadow organization that says one thing and has a completely different agenda on their mind, and anybody who gets in their way, they just get rid of them. Does that sound familiar? ~ Alan Ball

We have divided the Virtues of the Soul into two groups, the Virtues of the Character and the Virtues of the Intellect. ~ Aristotle.

I think everything happens in time. There's a time for everything. There's a time to be in a group, and there's a time to be solo. ~ Lauryn Hill

A group of men in evening clothes looks like a flock of crows, and is just about as inspiring. ~ Mark Twain

To a considerable extent we are faced by a technology arms race with terrorists. The communications revolution has made it easier for terrorist groups to reach out to vulnerable individuals with their violent extremist ideology and propaganda. It has also facilitated fundraising, recruitment and training. ~ Pauline Neville-Jones

Reclamation is hard work. Finding the value in your group's characteristics means always having to confront the darkness in those characteristics. For example, it is acceptable, and productive, to think of America as a great nation. It has many great characteristics, from the freedom it grants its citizens to the cultural contributions it has fostered and rewarded. But by unearthing America's good qualities, you will also find its destructive qualities. The way it has interfered internationally and created death and misery for countless citizens of other nations, its history of genocide and slavery, and so on. It is possible to know America's destructive power and still think it is a great nation. But some prefer not to look at all, so as to avoid the cognitive dissonance. It ~ Jessa Crispin

I can't bear to hear a human being spoken of with contempt just because of his group identification ... It's these respectable people here who create those hooligans out there. ~ Isaac Asimov

Human beings around the world have to be taught to go, 'Tamil equals Tamil civilians first, and the Tamil Tiger is a separate thing.' And both of those groups are different. It's like a square and a circle. ~ M.I.A.

This ... all this, the room, the people here,the odd little pairs and groups they'd formed, the ways each was finding to connect the others ... this was what she fought for. For these people, yes. And for moments like this, punctuated by coffee or tea, with a baby on one man's shoulder and a saint humming over the fireplace ... everyone gathered together to work toward their common goal. She fought for them, and for people she'd never met and never would, people who deserved a chance to make their own moments, built from their own flawed choices, with the people they found. ~ Eileen Wilks

There was no let-up. The tempo was always moderate but steady. If a new guy decided to pick up the pace, that's where it stayed, whether he finished with the group or not. You showed off at your peril. ~ John L. Parker Jr.

Idealization of a group is a natural consequence of separation from the group; in other words, it is a by-product of alienation. ~ Paula Gunn Allen

Two polar groups: at one pole we have the literary intellectuals, at the other scientists, and as the most representative, the physical scientists. Between the two a gulf of mutual incomprehension. ~ C.P. Snow